


OBVERSE VARIATIONS: CODA: Part Three

by ivorygates



Series: Obverse Variations [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Girl!Daniel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-09
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>1.  Yes, all the chapter titles are the titles of big Hollywood Movies.  Except <em>The Last Charge of the Calcutta Light Horse</em>, which is the title of the book that became one of the many movies released with the title <em>The Flight of the Wild Geese</em>.  And I could not resist it.  If you've ever seen the movie, you'll understand.  Honest.  Trust me.</p><p>2.  I love SG-35 with the fire of a thousand suns, especially Colonel Mary Margaret Perline McClusky.  Just so you know.</p><p>3.  This was originally supposed to be a thirty page story about househunting in DC that would have directly followed "Obverse Variations".  I still have that bit around here somewhere, because I ended up cutting it.  I expunged my need to write houseporn about Washington in another story, which would kind of fit in as the missing years of this one, only not, as it has a (linear) happy ending.  But meanwhile, this thing just took off, and suddenly it was ten years later, and things kept happening, and then it was a hundred thousand years -- I mean words -- later.</p><p>4.  I had huge amounts of fun writing about the everyday workings of the SGC, and coming up with alien missions (that would probably be too boring for television).  I also like my future a lot better than one involving the Ori and the Lucian Alliance.  Just so you know.  Because I really thought they could have done a lot more with the ruin of the Goa'uld Empire.  And also: semi-immortal parasitic snakes with a habit of hiding out in booby-trapped canopic jars?  There's no way you're going to get rid of all of them just by executing a few System Lords here and there.</p><p>5.  I bet other people do better summaries and afterwords than I do.  I never know what to say.</p></blockquote>





	OBVERSE VARIATIONS: CODA: Part Three

__

_**

X. The Way We Were

**_

__

On Thursday they're both back at the Mountain. She's catching up with AA&T and Major Hamilton's work with the Orand. They're in his office, listening to the playback of his conversations with them. They've spoken by MALP-relay for two hours for the last three days. The radio signal keeps the wormhole open.

"Why do they all speak English?" Major Hamilton asks, sounding curious. All the aliens they meet, he means.

"They don't," she says, surprised. "At least the Orand don't. They learned it from us -- from our initial greeting. You can hear it in the way they talk." She can, anyway. Their careful English, the way they shape their vowels; there's another language under there, just waiting to be unearthed. She hopes she can get them to speak it to her.

"You can tell just from listening to this, Dr. Jackson?"  
  
"You can hear it," she says, though she knows most people can't. But she speaks forty-five languages; she has an ear for this, just as she does for music. "And really, Major. You've seen me in my pajamas. Call me Dani."

"Only if you call me Pierce. Not 'Danielle' then?"

"No." That name belongs to the dead past, buried under stones. They reach the end of the recording. She sighs as she cues up the next one. "I really need to drive over and get my car."

Pierce laughs. "Send Hicks for it."

She blinks at him. "He's not my errand boy."  
  
"Sure he is," Pierce says patiently. "We're prepping the Orand mission -- what we _hope_ will be the Orand mission -- which you're behind on because of Washington. In a couple of hours we're going to go talk to them by MALP link, and then we've got analysis of that. And you've got AA &T. John's still hip-deep in the last batch of gadgets we brought back. Hicks has already finished the work on the power systems, so he's pretty much catching up on paperwork right now. He'd much rather go play in the snow. And your time's more valuable here."

_'Carter will bake you cookies.'_

_'Indy, you're going by that candle place on your way home. T's run out of candles again, and...'_

_'Hey, Sammy, look. It's an ice cream maker. So you can, you know, make ice cream.'_

_'Your dry cleaning, Dani. Because they were about to throw it out.'_

_'I picked up your damned charcoal briquettes, Jack. And you can get them out of the back of my Jeep yourself.'_

SG Teams take care of each other. On and off-world. She doesn't want that. It feels too much like dancing on a grave. But she asked for a Gate Team. Fought for one. And Pierce is right. Her time's more valuable here. There are never enough hours in the day. She's got to find The Garden of the Gods. _'The Jaffa speak of it as they once spoke of Kheb.'_ That's her only clue.

"If you're sure," she says uncertainly.

Pierce smiles brilliantly. "Engineers hate paperwork. And he can stop for doughnuts and some decent coffee on the way back."

The thought of coffee makes her salivate like one of Pavlov's dogs. "Decaf for me," she says, sighing. "I'll get him the keys."

#

They never do get to talk to the Orand in person. After two weeks of negotiations, the Orand send their MALP back and refuse to take any more calls. That doesn't mean she isn't busy, though. 35 goes through the Gate three times in the next fortnight. Twice to deserted planets -- one, troublingly, is in pristine condition, a high-tech civilization that looks as if its makers simply packed up and left (lots of looting there, no shooting needed); the other which has obviously been ravaged by war. That one holds a nasty surprise; some of the war machines are still active, and, sensing thermal signatures, chase them back through the Gate empty-handed. It's marked for a return visit, though. With back-up. On the third planet they spend three days attempting to reach a basis for trade negotiations. When the natives -- who never do tell them their name, or that of their planet -- discover they were involved in the _Goa'uld_ war, SG-35 is asked -- politely but firmly -- to leave. Dani's not completely sure why; aliens are, by definition, _alien_. It could be something as simple as deep-seated pacifist tendencies -- as with the Tollen and the Nox. They could dislike one of Earth's allies -- the Jaffa, the _Tok'ra_ , the Asgard. Or they could be planning to ally with the renascent _Goa'uld_.

Since she doesn't have any new leads on Ereshkigal, she's having AA&T run down old ones; combing almost twenty years of mission files for any cultures they've run into with Sumerian or Akkadian roots; instituting a search of Cataloguing and Transcription to find any items that might have come from such a world. (It's going to take a while.) Her days are long. From morning workout to evening workout she works a twelve-hour day, and every time she goes through the Gate, she falls behind. In the old days, she tried to do everything herself. Now she pushes everything she can off onto her assistants, and demands that they keep their reports _short_ , dammit. Someday (she knows, believes, suspects) she won't be here at all. They'll have to be ready. So she pushes Winchester. She wants him fluent in spoken _Goa'uld_ , every dialect she knows. He's going to become their _Goa'uld_ expert, like it or not. (He doesn't like it. She doesn't care. She thinks he might be the one to take the Department when the time comes. The man has a genius for organization.)

She should go see Freedman, she knows she should. She's heard gossip about him. MacKenzie's replacement. The one who takes care of Gate Teams when they crack -- or might. Unlike MacKenzie, it's his specialty, the only thing he does. (A literal, full-time alienist.) She'd hated MacKenzie with a passion; most of them had. He'd been a cold man, an outsider. Brought on-board to keep them all in line. And -- so it always seemed -- to get them out of the field as quickly as he could, on the slimmest pretext. But the Program's been running now for nearly twenty years. Freedman's just about grown up with it; tapped while still in medical school to train for it. His focus -- she's heard a lot about him from the other Teams -- is on keeping people _in_ the field, but if she does see him, she'll have to talk about John. And if she talks about John, she'll have to talk about Jack. Because the line between them, the one she so carefully constructed in her mind, is blurring. And she can't talk about that. Can't talk about the fact that the closer she gets to John, the more it frightens her. She's afraid of what she'll find out. She's afraid of what _Friedman_ will find out.

So she doesn't go.

In February 35 catches a series of easy missions, which Dani defines as any mission which doesn't involve any shooting and having to run for her life. They _do_ involve a lot of diplomacy and negotiation with alien cultures, though. Pierce takes lead. She supports and advises. It works out that way because she's impatient and bored. She knows she is, and hates herself for it, but it's true. Once she would have greeted the new alien cultures they meet with hope and wonder. Now the only thing she wonders is how each new set of aliens intends to betray them. She looks for traps, signs of alliance with the _Goa'uld_. She cautions Pierce -- constantly -- that the cost of entering into an alliance may be too high, and to always look for the hidden price. She sounds, she suspects, like Jack on one of his bad days. It may not be the way McCluskey envisioned things working, but it does work. More or less.

None of her lines of research (snakehunt edition) are panning out. She did get a 'go' to send a team back to P2X-338, where SG-1 found (and lost) the Eye of Tiamat. It was Babylonian, not Akkadian, but she's desperate enough to run down even the slimmest of possible connections to any culture that might've had ties to Ereshkigal. Only there was never anything on 338 but the ziggurat (which SG-1 blew up on their original mission), and obviously nobody's ever been back. Cold trail. Wherever Ereshkigal is, she's hiding her tracks very well, and Earth's getting no cooperation from either the Jaffa Free Nation or the _Tok'ra_ , both of which are stonewalling the _Tau'ri_ 's requests (through diplomatic channels, of course) for more information. The SGC's formally admitted it knows the Jaffa are harvesting _prim'ta_. The Jaffa are both denying it completely and promising to look into it. (Business as usual.) Both the Jaffa and the _Tok'ra_ are denying the existence of functioning sarcophagi, which their treaties would compel them to share with Earth, if they existed. Which they don't. Of course.

It would be nice if those were her only problems, but she has others. Her eyes are going. They've never been great -- she went into glasses at the age of twelve -- but the headaches she's been having for most of the past year are nearly constant now, and she knows it's eyestrain. She uses the big magnifying glass in her office all the time now, and strong lights, and without her glasses she can't see much at all. A few years ago her ophthalmologist told her she'd be looking at bifocals in a few years, and then it was okay; with progressive lenses, nobody would know but her. It's not okay now. Glasses are okay on a First Contact Team like SG-35. Not bifocals. With bifocals, she'll still be able to go offworld, but only to places safe and secure, for scientific missions. No first contacts, nothing dangerous, not when losing her glasses means that things won't just be a little blurry, it means she won't be able to see at all. When they find out, she'll lose SG-35. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

It's February. Their quarterly medical review's coming up in ten days.

#

She's been moody and withdrawn all week, and for Indiana that's saying plenty. She's got more than enough reasons, he knows. The Other Guy died in February. She didn't mention the anniversary, though he knows the exact date by now, so he didn't either. Learning tact in his old age, he guesses. That pretty much puts paid to any idea of celebrating Valentine's Day, either now, or for the rest of their lives, although considering her reaction to practically every holiday so far -- Thanksgiving and New Years' being nice exceptions -- he thinks it would probably be better to ignore it anyway. He supposes he should stop calling him the Other Guy; it seems kind of petty now. Habit, he supposes. A way of diffusing anger, because Jack O'Neill Mark I had everything he wanted. But O'Neill 's dead now, and he has it all. A Gate Team, the cabin in Minnesota, his old house. Indiana.

Only he doesn't quite. Have her. There's something eluding both of them, something he's not completely sure even time can fix, because it's not just about Washington, and what she did (and didn't) do there, and how much it hurt her. Watching her offworld these days is painful: seeing the difference between what she is and what she was, and he knows she sees it too -- that's why she has Hamilton taking point on the contacts. Hamilton still sees the potential for good in all the cool new aliens. All she sees is the former allies who have lied to them and sold them out. She shouldn't -- he thinks (and it's a new thought, a revelation) -- have come back here. He can't imagine where else she could have gone, and obviously neither could she. He knows she's -- conditionally -- happy here. She loves her work. She wanted a Gate Team. She hates to fail. They have each other, and he knows -- because he knows her -- she _does_ want that. Wants him. Wants them, but that won't solve their other problem, the one that's spilling over into their professional lives. And with a _Goa'uld_ Queen -- one she says is worse than Hathor -- out there...

He thinks about what she said when they got back from Timarek. _'Oh, trust me, John, it's better to die in harness.'_ Is that what she really wants? Without knowing it? He won't help her die. He wants them to have a life together. They're going into their quarterly medical review. First one as the new team. Those are brutal. Maybe she'll refocus after that. Then they can talk.

#

"Sit down, Dr. Jackson. Close the door first."

Another Colonel, another broomcloset office on 14. Her life goes in circles. She does as Colonel McCluskey asks. She knows it isn't about the quarterly. She managed to get through that with a passing score. There are some things practice actually does make perfect. "Is something wrong, Colonel?"

It's John and Pierce and Kyle, now, but the Colonel still isn't 'Maggie' to her, not even after two months and over a dozen missions. It's funny. Maybe there's only one colonel she'd ever call by his first name. She closes the door. Sits. Outside the Mountain it's almost the end of February, and Spring will be here soon -- well, two more months -- but down here the temperature never varies, cool and fugitively damp.

"Hard to say. Not with your work. No."

Then what? She _is_ her work.

"You'll excuse me taking the long way around. Old habits. I'm sure I'll be telling you a lot of things you already know. Just bear with me. Colonel's privilege. I'm sure you had plenty of time to get used to the notion. Even though you're a civilian, you've got a great deal of military experience."

"Experience with the military?" she asks, completely confused now. "Because if you mean experience _being_ military, I'm still ... not."

"That's right. You're a civilian," Colonel McCluskey says, as if Dani needed reminding. "Anyway. Oh, about ... I think it must have been around thirteen years ago now, one of our allies jumped the fence and got down with his bad self. At least, we saw tangible results at that time. Or you did. Me, I was in Iraq, doing nothing in particular."

"Me?" Dani asks. Apparently when you become a Colonel in any branch of the service they hand you an instruction manual on how to baffle people. McCluskey's method is long, drawn-out, rambling, and apparently pointless speeches. By the time she reaches the end of them, you actually manage to forget what she was talking about, and it always costs you. Dani's devoted a not-inconsiderable portion of her skill to seeing through this strange supernatural ability of Colonel McCluskey's.

"Yes of course," the Colonel says, as if Dani should automatically know what she's talking about. "Naturally you tidied things up and buried the remains. But things never do stay buried, especially when it's inconvenient."

_Thirteen years ago._

_One of our allies._

_Down with his bad self._

_Tangible results._

_You tidied things up._

_Things never do stay buried._

Colonel McCluskey's talking about John. She knows about John. How? _Hicks?_ The Colonel and Kyle have been assigned together before. She remembers something John said once about Kyle. _'...the boy's a computer genius in his spare time, who knew? No good with alien computers, of course, but he can get into most of the databases in the SGC...'_ Dani wonders which database Kyle hacked. To provide confirmation? Or was it something he found on his own and took to the Colonel, because when you're on a Team, that's the first place you take anything, from a broken heart to a terrorist threat. Your team leader.

"All right," Dani says. "We've established we're talking about the flawed Asgard clone of General -- then Colonel -- O'Neill."

"You still don't trust me, do you, Danielle?" the Colonel says.

The question takes her by surprise. She's never thought about it. She follows Colonel McCluskey's orders in the field and advises all of them. What more does the woman want? "Of course I do. You're a good officer. You'd never betray the SGC. What else is there?" With Jack there was more.

"There's trusting me to protect you, just for starters."

Jack protected her from everything. Stood up to General Hammond for her. The NID. "You _do_ protect me. You _have_ protected me. I respect your decisions."

"All of them?"

"Well, I probably don't know all of them." Such as why they're here, now, having this bizarre, elliptical, circular conversation. _For crying out loud, woman, I'm sorry if I've hurt your delicate feelings. Marine Colonels aren't supposed to have feelings. Now yell at me, tell me I'm a liability, and get over it._

"That's right, you don't. And when you guess what they are, you're probably guessing wrong."

"Okay. I'm wrong. And I don't trust you. And, hey, you've read my file. I'm an erratic unstable security risk. You asked for me, Colonel. Did it take you two months to figure out I wasn't good enough for you?"

"No. As I say, your work is good."

 _Oh-kay_. She's been here before. _Colonel's gone crazy, Foothold situation on the Base._ "So what _did_ it take you two months to figure out?"

"Nothing. I didn't have anything to figure out."

"But I did?"

Colonel McCluskey smiles, as if Dani's finally gotten a right answer in this bizarre game. "Like I say, that's hard to say," she answers, still in that same maddeningly calm voice.

"Oh, god, are you trying to drive me out of my _mind_?" Dani wails, getting to her feet.

"Indiana--"

"Don't call me that. Only Jack called me that."

"But John calls you that all the time," Colonel McCluskey points out reasonably. And Dani realizes she's been trapped, neatly and completely, and she'd known Colonel McCluskey was Black Ops but forgot she was also a Field Interrogator. The best didn't bother with truncheons or rubber hoses. Just a little quiet conversation, and you'd give up everything you had.

She sits back down slowly. Colonel McCluskey looks at her sympathetically. "You know, until I met you I never believed someone could serve eight years with a military unit, consult for the DoD for another decade, be married to a General and _still_ not get it. I knew who John Nielsen was from the moment he joined SG-35. I'm his commanding officer. I've read his file. It was Need to Know. I needed to know. So I know. Normally that wouldn't apply, but for Gate Teams the rules are a little different."

"Does he know?" Dani asks.

"He remembers being Jack O'Neill," Colonel McCluskey says patiently. "Of course he knows."

Dani silently, cheeks flaming. It's hard to remember the last time she felt like such an idiot. She should have known. She should have realized. But she hadn't wanted to think about this at all, had she?

"I know. He knows. He knows I know. I know he knows I know. And we all pretend none of us knows a thing. It's the military way," McCluskey says.

"But you just told me," Dani points out levelly. And that tells her just how much of a liability she's become; that McCluskey would have to _tell_ her. Why hadn't John seen it? Why hadn't he told her?

"Hard to imagine you didn't know. And there's our little problem."

They still have a little problem? Is it that she didn't tell McCluskey what McCluskey already knew? Or is it that she didn't know McCluskey knew it? "Just tell me what you want," Dani says.

"You know what a Gate Team has to be like. You were on SG-1." There's no emotion in McCluskey's voice, but at least all of Dani's skills haven't failed her. She can hear what McCluskey isn't saying this time. There's something just not working with SG-35, and she's the newest arrival, so she's the problem.

She stares at her hands. Her first instinct's to get up and leave. And keep leaving. SG-35. The SGC. Colorado. The USA. _John,_ who knew McCluskey knew who he was, and didn't tell her. "No other Gate Team is -- or was -- like SG-1. No other team ever will be. We were unique, and we were the best." The bitterness in her voice shocks her as much as the honesty. She hadn't meant to be honest.

"Now that's something you've never bothered to mention before," McCluskey says. She sounds neither offended nor relieved.

"Why should I? Everyone knows it and nobody wants to hear it. And besides, it's living in the past. We've been over and done for going on twelve years now."

"But still the best."

"Always will be," Dani answers steadily.

"Still," McCluskey says, "people do marry again. Hell, I tried it twice. Might go for the hat-trick one fine day. After all, you're seeing John." McCluskey's obviously either determined to tear her apart or make her resign from the team. Right here.

"And you know exactly how much that counts as something new," Dani says. "And you still asked for me for SG-35."

"John said you could work together in the field without problems. I trust his judgment."

"Well, it's not going to be an issue much longer." She might as well get everything out into the open right now. She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes.

"So you're going to quit on us?" McCluskey sounds disappointed, and Dani can't imagine why. She smiles, because the years and the mileage and the fact it isn't Jack don't matter at this moment. It's always fun to put one over on the Colonel, even if the butt of the bad joke is yourself.

"Not my choice. I'm going to be downchecked at the next quarterly. My eyes are getting worse. I need bifocals, I think. I know the regs. If I have to wear bifocals, I can't serve on a First Contact Team. Which is what SG-35 is."

There's silence for a moment. "So how'd you make it through this one?" McCluskey asks.

"I cheated."

"Danielle, I don't hand out bribes and I don't make deals. But I _would_ like to know. Honestly. If you had a choice. Would you stay in the field, or would you go back to AA &T full-time?"

She shrugs. There's really no point in answering. It isn't going to make any difference. But it's been a relief to -- finally -- tell McCluskey the truth. "I'd stay in the field, Colonel. As I've said before, anybody can do what I do behind a desk. Nobody else can do what I can do in the field." Even as bad at it as she is now. But she _wants_ to be out there, even if she isn't quite sure why. Ereshkigal's part of it, but not all.

"All right then. Good to know. And speaking of the field -- since our time together may be short -- are there any missions you'd care to propose?"

"Sure, Colonel. I'd like to suggest a re-visit to a place called Kheb." She had no idea what she was going to say before she said it, but now her mouth leads an unfettered life of its own, explaining about the Ascended, the temple on Kheb, the fact the writing inside the temple -- which SG-1 never got to document -- probably contains the genesis of one of Earth's major religions. It's not precisely a Loot-and-Shoot mission, but if they could bring back that information it would be something of major cultural importance. It would also provide them something of trade value to the advanced cultures they encounter, which is always a priority these days.

"These are interesting points," the Colonel says. "Why don't you send the original mission report to my computer, so I can prepare a mission request for the General?"

Dani smiles sourly. Sammy will love this one. "Sure, Colonel."

"Then I think we're done here. For now."

Dani gets up to leave. They aren't good, in the sense of okay. She knows that. But she hasn't been kicked off the team and she hasn't quit, and she's not really sure why. Once -- if this could have happened 'once upon a time' -- she would have. Perhaps her temper's mellowed with age. (All things are possible.) And she's let Colonel McCluskey in on a disastrous personal secret, one she's pretty sure even John doesn't know.

Things are changing.

#

"General."

"Colonel. You wanted to see me?"

"I have a request. Two requests, actually."

Sam regards Colonel McCluskey warily. In much the way, she imagines, General Hammond often regarded Colonel O'Neill. SG-35's becoming every bit the problem child SG-1 was. Maybe it's because of Dani and John Nielsen. Or that Colonel McCluskey's as much of a wild card as Jack O'Neill ever was. Major Hamilton's a stubborn iconoclast, too -- and there's a long list of reasons why Kyle Hicks is still a Technical Sergeant.

"Oh?"

"I need a medical waiver for one of my team. And I have a mission request."

"A medical waiver." 35's just passed its quarterly review, and nothing's been flagged. Is something wrong with Nielsen? "You want to tell me about the waiver?"

"Well, actually, General, I was just hoping you'd give me the free pass." McCluskey smiles innocently.

"Oh, come on, Colonel, you know that isn't how it works."

"Permission to speak off the record, then, ma'am?"

Off the record isn't really off the record. They both know it. But it does mean she has the option -- General's privilege -- to pretend she hasn't heard what she's about to hear, if she chooses. "Very well, Colonel. Off the record it is."

"I need a medical waiver to keep Dr. Jackson on the team. She came to me and told me -- in strict confidence -- that she cheated on her quarterly physical. But she won't pass the next one."

It takes a moment for the Colonel's words to sink in. "I-- She-- She _cheated_? You can't cheat on a quarterly medical review!" Although they all did.

The Colonel shrugs ever-so-slightly. "From what she told me, she found a way to beat the eye exam. She's pretty sure she needs bifocals. 35's listed as a First Contact Team. Bifocals would downcheck her. But I want to keep her. So I need a waiver. General, hear me out. Those rules are written for First Contact Teams that routinely go into live fire situations. We don't. Dr. Jackson's an invaluable member of SG-35. We need her."

"Colonel, if her eyes are getting bad enough for bifocals, doesn't that mean they're bad enough that if she loses her glasses offworld she really won't be able to see much at all?" Sam says. Dani's eyes were bad enough the day she walked into the SGC that she barely managed to qualify on the range. They can't have improved with age.

"So she carries a backup pair. Or two," McCluskey answers steadily.

"You could end up in a live fire situation any time you go through the Gate." Dani was always losing her glasses. She'd started carrying a backup pair, and Sam had carried a second one, but there were times that hadn't been enough. There'd be times now.

"That's always a possibility, ma'am. I have two civilians on my team. Within mission parameters, their safety supersedes the safety of military personnel under my command."

Dani always hated that. "Nielsen isn't -- exactly -- a civilian," she says. As they both know.

"Which is why -- if things go FUBAR -- Dr. Nielsen will become responsible for getting Dr. Jackson back through the Gate without reference to the rest of us. I'll speak to him about it."

"She'll shoot him."

"Then she'll have to shoot him in the Gate Room, because I don't doubt he'll have gotten her there. Ma'am."

"Colonel, how the _hell_ did she talk you into this?"

McCluskey smiles faintly. "Actually, I haven't discussed this with her, General. I just know she'd prefer to stay in the field if she had the option."

Sam sighs. Well, there are a lot of things she'd rather be doing herself besides flying a desk. And they _do_ need Dani out there. McCluskey's right. 35 doesn't catch a lot of live-fire missions. (It only takes one to kill you, though. It only took one to kill Janet.) "I'll take it under advisement. Now, you had a mission request?"

"Dr. Jackson's proposed a re-visit to a place called Kheb. No technology there, but apparently there's an alien temple containing an ancient philosophy text she thinks is important. She makes the case for being able to use the material as trade goods as well. I have the mission proposal with me."

"All right. Leave it with me and I'll take a look at it. And Colonel?"

"Ma'am?"

"Tell Dani to get her eyes checked. I don't want her spending the next three months walking into walls."

"Yes, ma'am."

#

She'd wondered if age had mellowed her. By the time she gets home -- leaving on the dot of 1800 -- she knows it hasn't. She's gone so far beyond angry she can barely breathe. John knew McCluskey knew who he was, and he didn't tell her. He let her just walk into McCluskey's trap and be made a fool of. If that's not lying, it's close enough.

He isn't there when she arrives. She doesn't mean to be here when he does. She drags out her suitcase and cabin duffel and begins to pack with the automatic ease of long practice. She'll go check into a hotel, buy herself some breathing space...

"Wha'cha doin'?"

She looks up. John's leaning on the doorframe, and she looks at him, and realizes Jack's been lying in his grave a year. The knowledge hits her like a hammer, makes her stomach roil with nausea. Because _he's still here._

"I spoke to Colonel McCluskey today," she says, straightening. Her voice doesn't fail her. Except at the worst, she's always been able to treat English as just another of the many languages and dialects she speaks, forcing it to bend to her will. Her face may betray her -- Jack always said it did -- but her voice won't.

"And?" Jack-now is actually easier to read than Jack-then. He's gotten sloppy, or he doesn't care. At this point in the conversation (once upon a time) he would've simply dropped off the radar: no facial expression, no body language; invisible. He had 'tells,' but he knew it, and could still them if he had to. Now he's simply radiating tension, the sense he already knows he isn't going to like what's coming next. His eyes flick between the open suitcase and her face, and every time they do, he tenses further.

She's got just about everything she needs, now. She slams the suitcase closed just to wind him tighter. "Funny thing. She told me she'd known who you really were ever since you joined the team. And that I was an idiot not to have realized it. Care to comment?"

He sighs deeply, chin to chest and shaking his head, weariness and anger showing in equal measures now. And it's so much an echo of one of their old fights she can't bear it, grief and rage rising up to strangle her, until words, more words, are the only thing that will cut through it and keep her breathing.

"Oh, of course not. Silence is golden. Silence and secrets. Why _not_ hang me out to dry? Why should I assume you'd care more about me than about a collection of strangers?" Who shouldn't be strangers.

"That isn't fair," he says.

"Oh, let's be fair," she says spitefully. "You want my secrets and you won't give up yours? I have news for you: you'll never know mine." Hathor. She told Jack. She won't tell him twice. She picks up the suitcase. Slings the cabin bag over her shoulder.

"Look," he says. "Put that down. We have to--"

#

"Talk?" she says. "Talked enough for one day. _John_."

She smiles, and it's an ugly expression, and he thinks of her the way she was when Shylac had her cranked up on that sarcophagus: high as a kite and trying to kill them all. She's angry -- more than that, _furious_ \-- hurt and running away, not a new look on her at all. And all because McCluskey blindsided her today. McCluskey should have known better, dammit, but how could she? Indy hasn't given her anything to go on; _he's_ kept his mouth shut, and the real care-and-feeding instructions aren't in her file. And McCluskey isn't the one who's going to be left to pick up the pieces.

"Indiana--"

"Don't call me that. Don't ever call me that again, you--"

 _Impostor? Fake?_ With an odd sense of detachment he waits for her next word.

"--traitor."

Ah. Okay. 'Traitor' is worse.

She turns and walks out. Doesn't bother trying to get past him; goes out through the door to the deck. He lets her go. Following her right now wouldn't improve matters. He walks into the living room and listens until he hears her car drive away. The house is very quiet once she's gone.

He wonders where she's gone. Carter's? No. Some place where she can be alone, where she doesn't have to see anyone she knows, but close enough she can get in to the Mountain if there's trouble. There's a limited number of hotels answering that description, especially in this weather. He could probably figure it out without too much effort, but he isn't going to. Right now what she needs is to run away, and he needs to figure out what set her off. Well, he _knows_ what set her off: McCluskey did. But he doesn't think that would've done it if there weren't something underneath. The thing that's been ... building ... for a while.

Whatever it is.

He sits down on the couch. There's no point in rushing things, and nothing to rush about right now. She'll cool down and figure herself out, and they'll talk. Or he'll figure her out and _make_ her talk. That's the way it's always gone. Right now it's still 'all or nothing' in her mind, but he knows that'll change. It's her greatest strength, and her greatest weakness. It's funny, though. He'd been the soldier, she'd been the civilian, but she'd been the one who'd seen things -- _some_ things anyway -- in black and white. Either/or. Right or wrong. Good or bad. You were on her side or ... not. And there'd _been_ sides. (Of course, they'd changed around a lot.) SG-1 against the SGC. The SGC against the NID. SG-1 and General Hammond against the Pentagon. Carter and Indy against him and T (the battle of the sexes). Indy and T against him and Carter (civilians and aliens versus American military). Him and Indy against Carter and T (loose cannons versus the conservative minds). Him and T against Carter and Indy (the military approach versus the scientific). SG-1 worked so well because they'd always been able to see all sides of a problem. And fight -- sometimes passionately -- for what each of them thought was right. It was a good balance. They'd only kept one secret from each other, and it hadn't really been a secret. He knows it wasn't. _He_ knew. He suspects Teal'c knew before Indy did. Carter knew without thinking about it -- the military teaches you not to think about the things it wouldn't be good for you to think about. And Indy knew before the end. They'd set it aside and gone on playing their minor war games. And then along came SG-35. Built around another secret.

McCluskey knows. They've never discussed it, but he knows Carter will have briefed her thoroughly. (She'd've been a fool not to, and say what you like about Sam Carter, she's no fool.) Hamilton and Hicks? On their way to guessing, more than likely. Knowing-without-saying; he's comfortable with that. McCluskey will tell them what they're supposed to know, and when. At some point, he's always known he and she would have to have The Official Talk, but until then he's just John Nielsen to her, and since they haven't had The Talk yet, it's clear that's the way she wants to play it. Indy knows, of course, but she didn't know McCluskey knew -- until now. She hates secrets, but she's been keeping too many. And they aren't working as a team. Should have been, and aren't. He knows it and so does McCluskey, which is why she gave his girl that little wake-up call. But what that means is he and McCluskey are going to have to have their talk now, and bring things out into the open. He isn't really looking forward to that.

Some secrets should stay buried.

#

She checks into the Broadmoor. It's near the Mountain. A fancy place, elegant, suitable for a General's wife. She usually stayed here when she came to visit the SGC. And now she's here again.

Supposedly, they never fought. Supposedly her consulting trips had nothing to do with that. She was needed, and so she came. She'd been able to let Jack know how things were going at his old command -- their old _home_ \-- when she returned to Washington. He'd liked that. It was always good to get out of Washington. Always good to come back and talk about the SGC with Jack.

She paces her room. Away. Back. Away. Colorado. Washington. Colorado. Desperately trying to keep from tearing each other apart. The same thing she's doing now. Again. It's time to admit the truth. She told the truth to Colonel McCluskey today, why not tell it to herself now? She hasn't had her first fight with John. She's had her latest fight with Jack. John isn't John. There _is_ no John. There's only Jack. Jack's come back from the dead, the way _she_ so often did -- a little changed, not knowing the details of his other life, but Jack. And she finally understands -- the way you do when it's hopeless and there's absolutely nothing else left to lose -- why she's been so afraid all these weeks. She doesn't want him to know the details of his other life, the one he shared with her in those missing years. She doesn't want him to know what she did to him there, what she's really become while he was ... gone. And he will, if she lets him get too close, if -- _when_ \-- she does those things to him again because she _has_ let him get too close.

She'll do anything to keep him from knowing, to keep from hurting him again. She'll even give him up.

Nothing's hurt this much since she saw him go into the ground. Since she saw Daniel rise up into the sky. But as Jack so often said when making the hard ones, _decision's made_. Could she -- she's wondered so many times -- have made Jack happy if the job hadn't been there to interfere? No. Not good enough. Failing him, failing the mission, failing his Team. Just failing.

_I won't fail this time. I won't fail you, Jack. I won't._

If clarity hurts -- and it does -- at least now that she has it, everything else becomes so much easier. She can see exactly what she needs to do, and remaining in qualifying trim isn't one of those things. She orders up a bottle of Scotch from Room Service.

It's not a celebration she has in mind, precisely.

More of a wake.

At least she knows who she's burying now.

_Decision's made._

#

Friday morning she comes into work with a ghastly hangover and possibly not quite sober yet -- the first time she's walked into the SGC in this condition in all her twenty years here -- and the retinal scanner nearly kills her. There's a memo from Colonel McCluskey in her email queue telling her to review her optical prescription. There's email from Jack (she deletes it unread), but he doesn't come by to see her in person. She keeps her door shut and locked and stays out of the Commissary. Unlike the old days, Jack doesn't have a command override for her door, and the rest of her business can be conducted virtually. She stays in her office until she's reasonably sure he's gone for the day, then leaves herself. No need to bother with -- or risk -- hitting the gym, but it's odd how much of a sense of guilt skipping it leaves her with. She knows that will pass.

Saturday and Sunday she spends trying to decide what to do with the rest of her life, and what to say to Jack when she finally has to talk to him. She goes downtown, having managed -- by calling everywhere -- to find an ophthalmologist with Saturday hours who can manage to fit her in to his schedule. He confirms what she suspected. Not only a stronger prescription, but bifocals. She pays a premium for expedited service, and orders four pairs of new glasses. She hasn't been able to match her current frames -- not and get the new pairs immediately, and she doesn't want to try to leave for points unknown without new glasses -- so when she wears them, everyone will know. (She'll cross that bridge when she comes to it.) She wonders just who she's trying to keep secrets from at this point, since she's already told McCluskey and is planning to resign from the team anyway, and gives up trying to untangle her own motivations. She's got enough clarity in her life at the moment. She doesn't want any more. After her appointment she goes back to the hotel. There are messages from Jack -- on her email, on her cell. She deletes them all. Hoping he won't come looking for her. (Hoping he will.) It won't solve anything. (He lied to her.) She lied to him: sins of omission, commission, absence... She still doesn't intend to tell him the truth, but she still feels guilty. Angry. Incapable of facing him. (Desperate to see him again.) But it isn't working. _They_ aren't working. She's just going to make him miserable all over again, and she can't bear the thought of that. It will be better to go away. _Run_ away (all right, she admits that); it's always what she's always been best at. The list of things she's run away from is too long to count; the things she's run _to_ , she's destroyed. Abydos is on that list and it begins and ends with Jack. And since there's no place on Earth he won't follow her, she won't go anywhere on Earth. Atlantis is in Pegasus Galaxy. That should be far enough. Can she get permission? How long will it take? And how much wreckage will she leave behind her? She's got her Sumerian expert for the department now, and Winchester's nearly fluent in _Goa'uld_. He can take AA &T.

Ereshkigal...?

They've only been searching a few weeks. A proper search will take months. _Years_. Even with the entire resources of the SGC behind it -- something she already knows Washington won't commit to -- they simply don't have the manpower to search every planet in the Stargate network. Sammy ran a projection once. If they had a hundred teams, and visited one address a day, every day -- just to go -- it would take them _four centuries_ to dial every Stargate they know about. And that isn't even all the ones there are, Sammy theorizes.

To find Ereshkigal they need allies they no longer have and can't regain.

So maybe... If she's breaking things off with Jack anyway, why not go back to Dakara? Or... if she can get to Chulak (easier, no negotiation required), she can send a message to Teal'c. If she can talk to him, explain everything, convince him to push the Jaffa Free Nation into hunting down Ereshkigal... At least she'd be useful there, more useful than she'd be in Atlantis. If Teal'c can take her into his household without compromising his status -- if he's willing to -- she could do invaluable work.

And whatever happens, she can't stay here.

She plans to talk to Sammy about it right after the Monday morning staff meeting, but at the meeting she discovers 35 has a mission this week. Kheb. It's been approved.

So she doesn't talk to Sammy. Not yet.

Jack's waiting for her in her office when she comes back from the Briefing Room. He's standing behind the door, so she doesn't see him until she's well inside and there's no escape. Master of tactics. "So," he says. "We should talk."

She stares at him, her arms full of files. One of them is the go-file for Kheb, and she isn't letting him know -- he can find out at the mission briefing along with the rest of the team. She sets the pile down on her desk. Wanting to beg his forgiveness for the last twelve years of her life. For the last twelve years of his.

"Talk," she echoes.

"Can't go on like this," he offers.

 _No. We can't. Sorry, Jack. Sorry._ "I just... I, well..." _Have you ever really thought about it, Jack? In five years I'll be over fifty, and you'll be -- what? Thirty-two? Three? And we'll be out together, and people will complement me on my handsome son, and it shouldn't bother me, and inside you're older than I am, but the body rules the mind in a lot of ways, we've both learned that..._

"Coming home?"

 _It ought to be home and it isn't._ "I need to... I just need to work a few more things out."

"Dani. I'm sorry you got into it with McCluskey."

"Her call. Colonel's privilege. She's right. I _am_ stupid."

#

She's leaning against her desk, head down, arms wrapped around herself, and he feels her moving away from him even though she hasn't shifted position at all. "You aren't stupid. You were protecting me."

"You've never needed protection. John."

When she says his name it sounds like an afterthought, the way it did at the beginning, as if she's having to remind herself of who he is. And she's wrong. She's always protected him. They've protected each other.

"Well, McCluskey and I had a nice official chat about my past. It might be time for John Nielsen to become a little bit less of a dark secret now, at least within the family. Thought I'd run the idea past you first."

He watches her shake her head. Not agreeing, not disagreeing, but more as if something just hurts. "I need some time," she says, as if she hasn't quite been listening, and he's too worried right now to be angry. It's been four days since she stormed out of the house, and he'd figured they'd be talking by now. But it looks like she's managed to finish the argument without him, and that isn't good. He's seen Indy withdraw this way before, but usually only when a mission has gone spectacularly wrong. Something's gone spectacularly wrong here, and somehow he's managed to miss the warning signs. There has to be something more in that little chat she and Colonel McCluskey had than just finding out he was an open secret, and now he's going to have to go back and get it out of her.

"A lot?" he asks, because direct questions have always been a good way of digging information out of Indy. She smiles faintly, not looking up. And not a happy smile.

"A few days."

He relaxes a little, because 'a few days' means he should be able to get her home by the weekend. He'll have talked to McCluskey by then, and then he'll dig until he gets to the bottom of whatever's really bothering Indy. Probably not fun for either of them, but they'll both feel better once it's over. Maybe this isn't really the best place for her. For them. They could transfer out to Area 51. Plenty of work in both their specialties. Better weather. It's a thought. Sure, there's the snake-hunt, and it's important work, in a vital-to-the-future-of-everyone-in-the-galaxy way. But Washington isn't going to put anything behind it without more hard intel, and it doesn't look like they're going to get any. And meanwhile, SG-35 will go right on -- what did she call it once? -- shopping at the Arms Bazaar. It's fun -- he'd wanted back on a Gate Team -- but not if he has to either watch her tearing herself apart out there...

...or choose between her and the Gate. And he doesn't. At the first sign of real trouble -- _Goa'uld_ -type galaxy-in-danger trouble -- Carter will call them both back wherever they are. He knows that. It's a relief to have a Plan B in place. He wonders how much she'll scream about moving again. Probably won't want to sell the house at all.

"Okay. A few days. I'll hold you to that."

She lifts one hand, just a little, sketching a half-wave in the air. _Go away._

"See you later," he says, and leaves.

#

Wednesday, and they gather for the briefing on what she knows is to be their last mission together. Kheb. Fitting, as Kheb was the beginning of the end so many years ago. For her, for Daniel, for her and Daniel together. Her and Daniel and Jack. One last mission. Full circle.

The others don't know it's their last mission as a team, of course. Well, she can keep a few things to herself. (A lot. Too many.) When they get back, she'll tell Sammy about getting re-assed. Pegasus Galaxy or the Jaffa Free Nation; Sammy can pick it, so long as it's any place that isn't here. Sammy will fuss. Dani will plead medical. She'd be off SG-35 in a few months anyway (she has her new glasses in her pocket); if she hadn't cheated she'd be off now. Dani supposes she ought to tell McCluskey before she goes to Sammy; she owes her that much, and it's proper form. She hopes Sammy will go for the Chulak idea. She could be useful there, assuming Teal'c agrees. If not, there's always Pegasus. Or once she's gotten through the Gate to Chulak -- if she's turned down -- she could just keep on going; she doesn't have to come back to the SGC at all. It's a seductive notion, though she's not quite sure she can talk herself into it. She might not be able to get Pegasus, either, but she ought to at least try. It's what she should have done in the first place -- gone to Pegasus instead of coming back here. Never would have seen John (seen Jack), never would have run headlong into disaster and self-knowledge. Too little wisdom gained too late. The story of her life.

When she briefs them on where they're going and why, Jack isn't amused. He's furious, in fact, as it sinks in. But he can't say anything. He's playing at being John. It's a handicap, and one Dani exploits ruthlessly; she knows he won't say anything in front of Pierce and Kyle. McCluskey's known about the mission proposal for almost a week, but a lot of mission proposals don't make it to missions, and there's no point in discussing them with the team until they're approved. Sammy knew about Kheb, of course. She was there. She knew Daniel. But it's been almost fifteen years now since Sammy went to Kheb, and it hasn't occurred to her Dani might have any hidden agenda. Why should she? She saw Daniel die. More or less.

_'It's not really death...'_

And Dani isn't sure herself whether she has a hidden agenda or not. She only knows she has to finish what she decided to do in Minnesota, long before she suspected the existence of John-not-John. Before she understood what she was doing, or why. Go back to the SGC to go through the Gate to get to Kheb. And find...

Something.

The monk, after all, said she'd be back.

#

"Freedman," he says in her ear. "Or I'm calling this one."

They're in the gear-up room. Getting ready. No one else can hear. A civilian consultant calling off a mission? Never happen. But Colonel McCluskey would certainly take Jack O'Neill's word over Danielle Jackson's, no questions asked. Under other circumstances -- if she'd built the bonds here she should have -- she'd be able to give him a fight. But then, if she'd done that, they wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place, would they?

"Freedman," she agrees. "As soon as we get back."

He moves away. What does he imagine they'll be seeing Freedman _for_ , she wonders? And who will be going? Couples counseling? The whole team? Or just her, going to confess her sins? It doesn't matter. She isn't going to go. When she gets back, she'll be leaving SG-35 for the best of reasons. She isn't physically up to a First Contact Team any more. No harm, no foul.

#

 

 

__

_**

XI. The Last Charge of the Calcutta Light Horse

**_

__

They step through the Gate. She moves up beside McCluskey. It's Pierce's usual position, but she doesn't want to be anywhere near Jack. It's reasonable enough, though; she's been to Kheb before, and of the five of them she's the only one who has. Officially.

"Which way?" McCluskey asks.

"That way." She ought to read the heading off her GPS, but she's wearing her old glasses. She can't see the numbers. She points. The landmarks haven't changed in all the time she's been gone, though the trees are larger now. They head out. After three hours, they reach the temple. Where the temple was, because it isn't there now. It's been blasted out of existence. Only a couple of walls are left. Vines have started to grow up over them. The destruction is ... familiar.

" _Goa'uld_ ," Jack says.

Where the temple itself stood, only a deep pit is left. She staggers into what's left of the courtyard on suddenly-unsteady legs. The bottom of the pit has been fused to glass. She looks down and sees a blurred reflection of herself. Dream images come back to her. Her recurring nightmare. The Stargate. The dark place. Daniel.

On Abydos they say -- they _said_ \-- dreams teach; it's a common motif in a number of cultures, not only Abydos's root Egyptian culture. She rejected the idea of Ascension fourteen years ago and thought she'd stopped considering it now, but she realizes she's never quite abandoned the idea: it's such a thorough form of escape. But in all those dreams (nightmares) about being lost, being trapped on the wrong side of the Stargate, the speaker she could never quite identify was Daniel, and Daniel was always saying goodbye, _really_ goodbye, because whether it was death or apotheosis that separated them on that long-ago April, their link is truly severed forever now, and this is his grave. It's hard to remember him beyond the images she has left to her. She wonders what he'd look like now, if he were alive and still her twin.

Lover.

If he'd lived, stayed, how would her life, _their_ lives, have run? Would their interrupted conversation be over now, or would it have deepened over the years? Become something she can't imagine? Changed her in different ways than she's been changed?

The time they had together -- what little there was -- was sweet. Bittersweet. But there is not one without the other, the bitter and the sweet. She knows that now. It was a strange tangled complicated thing between them, from beginning to end. Always, if she's honest, pleasure and pain mixed together, each making the other sharper. Love and death. Her life with Jack has been love and death, and she would not trade the sharp brightness of her life for freedom from its pain. This is the riddle she was meant to solve, the true choice she was meant to make the first time she came here, though for his own reasons the monk hid it in another. And if hours of dull anguish are repaid in only moments of soaring joy, then at least she can claim these moments for her own. If the economics of that transmutation don't seem quite equitable, it's just as well to remember for some there's no transmutation at all. Love and death. ( _Choose,_ the monk said.) She chose Jack, whether she knew it at the time or not, and, having chosen him, took Daniel into her bed because she could do nothing else. Daniel ... left. And Jack lived. Daniel left -- left _her_ \-- because he wasn't meant to be here ... and she's never been meant to follow.

She feels a lightness, a release, as if something deferred too long is over at last. Their relationship ended in its own way. Ending in Jack. She'll miss Daniel always, but now without hope. Sometimes that's kinder. She can love him and mourn him and let him go. _Goodbye._ She never really said goodbye. She says it now. _Goodbye._ And she will love Jack and mourn him and let him go too. _Goodbye._ She takes a deep ragged breath.

"How long?" She hears McCluskey's voice behind her as the others follow her into the ruins.

"Hard to say." Jack. "Dani?"

She turns around, and her eyes are dry. Squints at the sky. Fumbles in her pocket, sighing, for her new glasses. Puts them on. The world comes into sharper focus. They're progressive lenses, so there's no betraying line, but her eyes pull and ache at the sudden change.

"Death-gliders?" she suggests. Her voice is steady. This is her world, and she must live in it all her days.

Jack shrugs. "Looks like."

"Then... a year. Two. The plant-life's coming back, but it'd take a couple of growing seasons for it to take over the burned areas. Maybe three, but I don't think so."

"So the mission's a wash," McCluskey says. "Let's go home."

"No," she says. "Wait." She doesn't know why she says it, but she knows there's something here to find beyond her own epiphany. "Give me a few minutes." She turns back into the ruins, pacing around the edge of the crater. There's nothing actually to see; the central area -- the area around the crater that's now what the temple once was -- is utterly sterile; a space of sand and gravel, dust and flagstones. Death-gliders would have strafed the place and blown it to bits. She's seen _Goa'uld_ destruction before; nothing's ever left but slag and rubble. 'Why' isn't the question. The _Goa'uld_ destroy things for the love of destruction. 'How' is more important. This place belonged to the Ascended. She remembers Daniel telling her about their capabilities. It should have been protected by the most powerful forces in the Universe. So... maybe the Ascended left. Okay. They left. Still...

She paces. This is Kheb. When they were the slaves of the _Goa'uld_ , this place was the only hope of liberation for the Jaffa. It was the hidden paradise of their secret religion. The Jaffa are still talking about Kheb, though. Sort of.

_'...they speak of it as they once spoke of Kheb.'_

The temple was destroyed a year or two ago, no more. Anubis' War was almost thirteen years ago, now. What _Goa'uld_ still has a fleet, and would come to Kheb? The _Goa'uld_ had all feared Kheb. They'd stayed away. It was a place no _Goa'uld_ would come. The perfect hiding place.

_'The Jaffa now speak of The Garden of the Gods as they once spoke of Kheb.'_

According to Shallan, there've been rumors among the Jaffa about The Garden of the Gods for a couple of years now.

It's been right under her nose all along.

_"Colonel!"_

#

He hasn't been sure what to make of anything since the mission was announced this morning. Kheb. He guesses he and Dani are pretty even in the 'keeping secrets' department now. Not that this is supposed to be a contest. All he wants is for her to _come home,_ dammit. And see Freedman. They'll both go; fair's fair. Because he knows the bill of goods she sold Carter and McCluskey's a damned lie. A good one, but not the real reason she wanted to come to Kheb. Film the inside of the temple? Fine, even reasonable, but any of the Teams could have done that at any time. No, the reason SG-35's on Kheb's because of _Daniel_ Jackson, who's _still_ not a done deal with her, even though the man practically died in her arms. She always said he wasn't dead, but ... close enough. Gone. Jackson was looking for something on Kheb he never found: a way home. He found another way -- apparently -- but that doesn't explain what _Dani's_ looking for here. Because she _is_ home. He'd said Daniel was good for her, and he was. Tore her heart out when he died, but the bar-hopping never started up again -- not as far as _he_ knows, anyway. About a year and a half later he was back in High School, so he doesn't know what she did after that, but Daniel settled her, and -- until now -- John hasn't begrudged the fact that she still thinks about him. Thinking is a different matter than whatever-it-is she may-or-may-not be intending to do here.

He's just about made up his mind to take McCluskey aside and give her a quick Ancient History Lesson -- they'll be off the line for sure while they cycle through Freedman's office, and it'll probably be one hell of a chilly trip back to the Gate, too -- but when they find the condition the temple's in, that changes everything. It's been whacked by the snakes. Not recently enough to be an active threat -- though they're all on edge -- but there's nothing left. And that really bites. The only reason he went along with this at all is Kheb's supposed to be about as safe as the Gate Room -- at least between the Stargate and the Temple. Dani had problems going inside the temple before, but he figured they'd burn that bridge when they came to it. But now? He supposes it's a good thing they came after all, but he's not happy about it. He watches as Dani pulls out a second set of glasses and puts them on. (McCluskey doesn't seem surprised, but he is.) He and Dani discuss the probable date of the destruction. Obviously nothing to salvage. Dani still wants to stay.

McCluskey shoots him a questioning look. She hasn't missed the fact things aren't going well with her civilian command; his second talk with her would have given that away if nothing else did. Too bad he didn't get anything useful out of it. McCluskey has no more idea than he does of what's wrong. All she could tell him was that the two of them discussed his identity. They discussed whether Dani wanted to stay in the field or not if she had a choice; that she was worried about being downchecked at her next evaluation. They discussed potential future missions. Well, he knows now they discussed Kheb. He nods, off McCluskey's look. They should stay, at least for a few minutes. He watches as Dani prowls around the blast-area, thinking about whatever's caught her attention. He walks over to McCluskey.

"New glasses?" he says, keeping his voice low. McCluskey nods, but doesn't say anything. She likes to play things close to the vest. Colonel's privilege. But he can fill in the blanks. He can't remember the last time he saw Dani bring reading home. And he knows, now, what worried her so much about her next medical evaluation she was actually willing to mention it to Colonel McCluskey. Her eyes have gotten worse.

 _"Colonel!"_ she shouts and comes barreling over to them, skidding across the gravel. Her face is white, and she looks like she's just gotten some really bad news. She's figured something out.

"I think-- I think-- We need to look around." She's jittering from one foot to the other, and suddenly she looks twenty-five, not forty-six. Like a little kid again, and he barely stops himself from answering her before McCluskey does.

"You've found something, Dr. Jackson?"

"No. But I think-- Look. Shallan... She said the Jaffa reactionaries were talking about The Garden of the Gods, right? Ereshkigal's base. It had to be."

"We assumed it was, yes," McCluskey says.

"And they linked it with Kheb."

"Yes," McCluskey says. (He's already got a bad feeling about this.)

"What if it's _on_ Kheb? Who'd look for it here? No _Goa'uld_ would hide here, no Jaffa would claim this world, and ... the temple was destroyed by _Goa'uld_ weapons. Recently. Within the last couple of years. Even if the Ascended abandoned it -- for some reason -- who would want to destroy it but the _Goa'uld_? Which means there've been _Goa'uld_ here since the fall of Anubis. And the only _Goa'uld_ I can imagine doing that would be -- Ereshkigal." She looks back and forth between them pleadingly. She ends staring at him. "You have to believe me," she says. "She's here."

He does. Seat-of-the-pants flyer, arriving at her conclusions by instinct. She wanted to come to Kheb for a reason -- a good one -- she just didn't know what it was. Might even have told herself it was something to do with Jackson, but it wasn't. She knew it was Ereshkigal, but couldn't quite _let_ herself know. She just knew she had to come.

"So where do we start looking?" McCluskey asks.

" _Naquaadah_ ," he says. "There isn't any here. Teal'c said so back when this guy from another dimension -- long story -- told us about Kheb in the first place. But the snakes love it. We find traces of that, it should lead us to their base, if they have one. Do a quick recon, pull back, have General Carter send _Archimedes_ to drop a couple of Gatebusters on it. That should take care of things."

"If there's anything here," McCluskey says doubtfully.

He shrugs. He really hopes there isn't. Indy's sure there is.

"Let's go see the raree show," McCluskey says, making up her mind. "Hicks, Dr. Nielsen, see if you can find us some _naquaadah_. Major Hamilton, Dr. Jackson, look sharp. I do hate surprises."

They pick up traces of _naquaadah_ immediately; enough to tell them there's a _Goa'uld_ presence, and in which direction, not enough to tell them more. They only have basic equipment with them; this was supposed to be Indiana's show. To find out anything really useful, they really need to go and look. They head west, toward the mountains. The day on Kheb runs 30 hours, and they came through the Gate in early morning, it should still be light by the time they get there.

They _could,_ of course, head back for the Gate with what they already know, except they don't really know anything. Indy has a theory. They're got a little proof (not enough). They're checking out the rest of it. Business as usual. Automatically, they string out into a long line on the march. Easier to hide and scatter if something flies overhead. Likelier more of them will survive a strafing run. McCluskey has point, Hicks is walking drag, he's behind McCluskey -- keeping her on course -- Indy and Hamilton are in between. She's being careful -- he's glad to see -- keeping her eyes out for cover. Hamilton doesn't have the same instincts, but John's been in the field with him enough to know he'll drop flat if there's shooting; it will have to be enough. Carter won't be looking for them until tomorrow; Indy asked for a full day at the temple; they'd planned on being here overnight.

If there's anything here, they're already in trouble: it's a three-hour run back to the Gate from the ruined temple, and they're heading farther away from it with every step.

Decision's made.

They continue on for about two hours -- five hours from the Gate now -- before McCluskey calls a halt for rest and food. There's no trail, no sign anybody's come this way, and John finds himself wishing for Teal'c. Teal'c could track anything through anywhere -- if something had come this way before them, Teal'c would know. (Might as well wish for the moon and stars.) When they stop, they head off into a stand of trees. Before everybody's quite settled, Indy's already sitting, pack off, rummaging through it for an MRE. He squats beside her and tips her glasses off.

"Hey!" she says. (But quietly, because voices carry.) He looks through the lenses of her new glasses. They're stronger than the old ones, and there's a discontinuity between the top and bottom.

"Give them back," she says, very quietly. "I can't see." He hands the glasses back. She rubs her eyes before she puts them on. He's pretty sure she's got a headache, and digs in his pack for ibuprofen.

"Does Carter know?" he asks, handing them to her.

She glances at McCluskey. "Pretty sure." She sighs, and tosses the pills back -- swallowing them dry -- and tears open the MRE. "All that work for nothing."

Because she won't be able to stay on a First Contact Team with her eyes this bad. She shouldn't be here now, not walking into what might turn into a Live Fire situation at any moment. And McCluskey obviously knows about the new glasses, and McCluskey brought her along -- she could have ordered Indy back to the Gate with Hamilton -- they could have sent him; no real need to argue ethics with the _Goa'uld_. But splitting the Team in enemy territory's always a bad idea. He knows it. McCluskey knows it. And Indy would just have talked Hamilton into turning back and following them anyway. He knows that too, even if McCluskey might not.

"It's okay," she tells him. "Supposed to be an easy mission. Kheb. My last one. I was going to ... say ... when we got back."

This makes the other things he's thought about easier in a way. No reason now not to make that transfer out to Area 51 (if they all make it back alive). She'll be leaving the Teams anyway, and he knows she doesn't want to run AA&T as a full-time job.

"Look, Dani, I've been thinking--"

She pats his knee. "Think later, Jack. Work to do, now. Let's go talk to the Colonel about herpetology."

"Eat first," he says, and she settles back, prodding at her meal with the plastic fork. Making the usual faces, because even though she'll really eat anything, MREs are just ... insulting ... and twelve years hasn't changed that. They eat in silence, both constantly watching their surroundings -- and the sky -- for any movement. He thinks about what she's said. New glasses. Last mission. That isn't what's been bothering her these last few days, though. She's just called him 'Jack.' Didn't catch herself. Didn't correct herself. Why? She's always been so careful. He sets the thought aside. She's right. No time for it here.

After they eat, they go over to the others. McCluskey's sitting flanked by Hamilton and Hicks. Hamilton looks nervous, Hicks just looks watchful. McCluskey looks up as they approach.

"Assuming we find something, Doctors, what are we likely to find?" A neat sidestep on McCluskey's part; soliciting information from her two _Goa'uld_ experts without giving anything away.

Indy grins at her cheerfully, more at ease with all of them now than she's been any time in the last three months. "Oddly enough, Colonel, I've never actually seen a functioning _Goa'uld_ temple. Which is -- I believe -- what Ereshkigal would be creating. A place to ... nurture ... her ... spawn. Pyramids, almost certainly. She'll need them to land _ha'tak_. We know she has them, almost certainly, since there's _naquadaah_."

McCluskey regards him, eyebrows raised. His turn.

"Might be something smaller," he says. " _Tel'taks_. Don't need a pyramid for those. The temple back there could have been taken out by an _al'kesh_ or a couple of Death Gliders. They both use _ha'taks_ as a base -- usually -- but the base ship doesn't need to be here."

Indy makes a rude noise of disagreement. "This amount of _naquadaah_ means large-scale _Goa'uld_ technology. I'm pretty sure it's generators -- power plants -- hyperdrive engines. _Ha'taks_."

"What else?" McCluskey asks.

Indy looks at him and shrugs. "It depends. Either this is her new throneworld or it isn't. If it is, she's building a complex something like Dakara. If not--" she shrugs again. "Anything."

"Hostiles?" McCluskey probes.

"Probably Jaffa," he says. "We already know some of them are going back to snakes. Probably some of them are willing to go back to slavery, too."

"Humans," Indy says to McCluskey. "Human _men_ , anyway. You're safe, I'm safe. But." She gestures, suddenly unwilling to go on talking.

McCluskey just looks puzzled, and he knows it's up to him. "This _Goa'uld_ Queen -- Hathor -- had this _thing_ ," he says. "When she breathed on you, you'd... You'd do whatever she wanted you to. You couldn't stop yourself." He doesn't remember what happened -- _O'Neill_ doesn't remember what happened -- when Hathor took over the SGC. But people'd been trying to reconstruct the details for years afterward. And Carter and Frasier'd been eyewitnesses to a lot of it.

"Is there an antidote?" McCluskey asks, looking at them.

Indy shakes her head. "When she -- Hathor -- went through the Stargate, the compulsion to obey vanished," she says. "None of the men -- at the SGC -- really remembered what had happened. Ever. Janet... Dr. Frasier... thought the compound was biological in origin. Something the Queens naturally produced. Sam ... knocked Hathor's control over Jack -- Colonel -- General O'Neill -- loose with a sarcophagus. But that didn't affect the memory loss. And... apparently... the compound only works once. So you can't be re-infected. We ran into Hathor again. She didn't try to use it again. On, um ... Jack."

"We can't count on finding a convenient sarc if we run into trouble. Hicks, Major, try not to kiss any strange women. That's an order," McCluskey says.

"Yes, ma'am," Hicks says dutifully.

McCluskey looks at him, eyebrows raised, and he knows what she's asking. He shrugs. He doesn't know whether he's immune or not. Whether the immunity would extend to all _Goa'uld_ Queens, and if it does, whether it's been transmitted from Jack O'Neill to John Nielsen.

They rest for another twenty minutes and move on.

Another hour and they're in the mountains. Six hours from the Stargate at a good hiking pace. They've finally left the stream behind, and as even the sound of it fades into the distance, the quiet seems somehow spooky. The country's rougher here, and they close up. The energy readings are stronger, too. He wonders why wherever it is they're going's so damned far from the Stargate. Why hide if you're sure nobody's looking?

Three more hours (nine hours from the Stargate). McCluskey calls for a ninety-minute break this time. Hicks thinks there might be a valley on the other side of the ridge -- if there is, it might be paydirt. It looks like another hour to the top. If they don't find anything when they get there, McCluskey's thinking about turning back and calling for an aerial survey when they get home, because none of them's seen anything -- not a footprint, not a broken twig, nothing but a big crater that shouldn't have been there and these anomalous energy readings that -- ya sure you betcha -- are a serious red flag, but they're almost a half day from the Stargate and are looking at a night's camp in open country even if they turn back now. Unless they want to pull a twenty-hour hike, not something to consider unless they're desperate.

"No birds," Indy says at the stop. She's tired. They all are. Nine hours, half of it uphill, and all of them carrying full gear.

Hicks looks up, frowning. He gets it first. "Here before?" he asks.

"Lots of them," she says. "At least around the temple. Big ones, little ones. Raven types. And songbirds. Mice and squirrels, too."

"Crap," John says quietly. The things might all be dead, but... "Hicks. How long would they stay away if they were scared off? The birds?"

"Not more'n a few days at a time," Hicks answers. "Takes a lot to scare a crow."

"Active presence," McCluskey says, putting it together. She thinks for a moment. "Did any of you hear any birds? Anywhere?"

John thinks back. It was morning when they came through. It's spring here. There should have been plenty. He doesn't remember hearing any, but between the wind in the trees and the stream -- they followed it most of the way, until they headed into the mountains -- he isn't sure. Those two sounds masked the lack of all others until they headed upland. He shrugs. He's not sure.

Hamilton didn't notice at all, and Indy isn't sure either, for the same reason John isn't; the sound of the stream covered a lot, and she just assumed they were there. Hicks is pretty sure he hasn't heard any birds at all. Until Indy mentioned it, he didn't know whether that was unusual or not. John will say one thing for him; knowing one way or the other wouldn't have made any difference to Hicks's level of alertness.

#

McCluskey nods. Glances at the sun. And suddenly Dani knows she's come to a decision; everything's changed and the air's charged.

"Hamilton, Hicks, I want you to head back to the Stargate and tell General Carter we think we've found Ereshkigal's bolt-hole. Give her our last known position and tell her my suggestion's to send one of the F-333s on a reconnaissance mission to see what's here. Meanwhile, she should probably lob a couple of Gatebusters through the door if we're not right behind you. Say, ten hours, max."

"Maggie, for God's sake," Hamilton says. His voice is agonized.

It's as if the new glasses have let Dani see things new glasses usually don't. As if they're somehow magic, though magic's something she doesn't believe in. Suddenly she can see the way she used to see -- not just people, but the relationships between them. McCluskey said she might marry again some day. It could, conceivably, be to Pierce, because -- Dani now understands -- they love each other. The idea of leaving her behind -- here, in danger -- is both a shock, and, in a sense, a betrayal, though this is the area of McCluskey's greatest competence, not his. Pierce, Dani already knows, weighs situations, figuring out benefits. Ethical absolutes, as far as they exist. Sometimes he's good with people, but people and ethics don't really mix in his mind. Pierce has a lot of friends, Dani knows, but isn't always good at reading strangers quickly. He tries not to attach himself to people while he's weighing issues.

Dani's never separated the two.

"Go on now, Major. Scat. And don't stop for anything, which means you'll probably be doing the last of the trip in the dark, but I understand this place has a moon?"

"Two," Dani says.

"There you are. Hicks, keep him honest. You know higher education addles the brain."

"Yes, ma'am," Hicks says, as he gets to his feet. He tosses off one of his dreadful salutes, regarding them both -- Pierce and McCluskey -- blandly.

And then there's Hicks. You might say he worshipped Colonel McCluskey if he didn't see her flaws so clearly -- and point them out. That he despised Major Hamilton if he didn't obviously like him. You could say he saw the world in black and white, but it wouldn't be true. Hicks just likes Life to be simple and easy. In the field, he has officers to give him orders so he doesn't have to waste his valuable time thinking. If he doesn't like the orders, he gets a new officer. He likes McCluskey -- he _loves_ McCluskey -- and he intends to keep her. And because he wants McCluskey to have what she wants, he'll keep Hamilton alive, too.

"Hey, Kyle," Dani says, "be sure to pick me up a quart of milk on your way home."

"I surely will, Doc," he says.

"And Pierce?" she adds. "Be good." Pierce smiles tightly as he stands. He doesn't like this at all. He walks off down the mountain, back the way they came. Kyle follows.

"Think it's going to do any good?" Jack asks.

McCluskey shakes her head. "Longshot."

"Hey?" Dani says. Because suddenly the two of them are talking in Colonel-code. They both ignore her.

"Okay, first I have to ask if there's any officer here of a higher rank than I am," McCluskey announces. Jack shakes his head, smiling faintly and looking down at the ground. "Then I suppose I should ask you for your date of rank," McCluskey continues.

Jack looks up then. "Colonel, if you think I want to take charge of this dog-and-pony show because of who I-- _He--_ Colonel, _this_ Jack O'Neill retired one hell of a long time ago."

"Nobody knows more about beating the _Goa'uld_ ," McCluskey says simply. "And I'm not going up that hill without a firm chain of command in place."

"Ah, guys?" Dani says. "As much as I love a good military argument -- and, you know, I've really missed them -- I have no idea what's going on. Don't you ... expect Pierce and Kyle to get to the Stargate?" They're going to die? She feels as if she's just finally figured out how to get to know them.

"I hope they do," McCluskey tells her, "but no. The next best thing is if they can make a run for it and hide. If there's enough enemy activity to keep the local wildlife at bay, they've probably already picked us up on their surveillance."

"So we're walking into a trap?" Dani asks.

"Either the two of them will provide enough of a distraction to allow us to do a recon of the Base and fall back, or our attempt to enter the Base will provide enough of a distraction to allow them to escape," McCluskey says.

"Or we all get caught," Dani says.

"See, Colonel? She's always like that. It's always 'Apophis is going to destroy the Earth' or 'the Base is going to be overrun by Replicators'. Every little thing is an emergency with her." Jack is (as so often when he did not wish to be pushed into a decision) clowning around.

"That's a damned lie. When the Replicators attacked Earth I was dead; Anise ringed me into a _tel'tak_ and put me into a sarcophagus. And Apophis only tried to destroy the Earth once. The second time it was Anubis' fleet," she says. It's irresistible to play up to him, as _she_ so often did -- at the SCG, in Washington. She was damned good at her job. They were a team until the day he died.

"These snakes in sequined bedsheets all look alike to me. And your point is?"

"Colonel?" McCluskey says sharply.

"It's 'Doctor'," Jack says, equally sharply. But the crack of command is there, and they all hear it. Jack and McCluskey lock eyes -- arguing silently, Dani realizes with a faint sense of surrealism, over who's _not_ going to be boss. Jack wins, of course.

"Very well. Doctor. Doctor. Let's go see the raree show."

"I love a parade," Jack agrees blandly.

It's another hour to the top of the hill, or ridge, or mountain. The two of them follow McCluskey. Dani does wonder why -- if she's right, if McCluskey's right, and they're walking into trouble -- they haven't seen any of it. Right now she'd almost like to be captured, if it meant she could stop walking. She's in great physical shape (aside from her eyes), but this is a hell of a hike, and SG-35's never been much for SG-1's old favorite, the Planetary Minerals Survey. They'd used to walk for miles...

They reach the ridgetop. On the other side there's a long wide valley sweeping off into the distance as far as the eye can see -- maybe fifty miles? -- before starting a climb into some _serious_ mountains. All there is in the valley is trees. Nothing else.

"This isn't right," Jack whispers, glancing down at the meter in his hand. "We should be right on top of it."

Dani still has her quarterstaff (and thank god for that). She lifts it up, and (feeling just a little foolish), takes it by the end and extends it slowly out over the valley. At first nothing happens. Then suddenly the image of untrammeled valley forest ripples as half the length of the staff vanishes through the hologram screen.

Something on the other side grabs it.

She staggers a step forward automatically before she manages to remember to let go. Jack grabs her -- McCluskey's bringing up her gun to cover them both -- but it's already too late. Jaffa in armor swarm out of the brush from behind and below them. The armor's unlike any Jaffa armor Dani's ever seen before. It's black. The heads resemble lions. (The eyes still glow red; that hasn't changed.) The Jaffa bark out commands in a _Goa'uld_ dialect so ancient she'd have trouble understanding it if it weren't obvious what they were saying.

"They're telling us to surrender," she says.

The three of them raise their hands.

They're disarmed and herded through the hologram. On the other side (they can now see) are ramparts broken by steps leading down the ridge. There are guards on the ramparts. One of them's still holding her quarterstaff. She looks past them and her eyes widen in shock. There's a city here. A second Stargate.

"Figures," Jack says quietly. One of their captors pokes him in the back with a staff-weapon, a command that needs no translation. _Shut up._

The valley's been clear-cut. Three pyramids anchor the site at the farthest point in the construction, but no _ha'tak_ are docked. She can see a landing field off to the left of the pyramids, filled with _tel'taks, al'kesh,_ and Death Gliders. In front of the pyramids there's a palace, surrounded by a garden, and a broad roadway of brightly colored bricks -- from this height she can see the design they make is like a woven tapestry -- leads straight from the steps at the ridge wall to the palace. Golden lions, each as large as the Great Sphinx, flank its entrance. To the right are more buildings; probably barracks for the Jaffa. Beyond that, there's what's obviously a drilling field. She sees the distant flash of energy weapons. The Stargate's set in the middle of the roadway, halfway between the palace and the edge of the valley. She glances at Jack and knows what he's thinking. This Stargate would have signaled the activation of the other one. Ereshkigal would have known someone was on Kheb from the moment they arrived. Even if they'd turned back the moment they saw the temple, it might already have been too late.

They can only hope Kyle and Pierce make it through.

Longshot.

They're herded down the roadway, up the steps of the palace, and inside. The room they're taken to is obviously an audience chamber: braziers, a throne -- currently empty -- a gigantic golden statue (a representation of Ereshkigal, flanked by lions and dragon-serpents). Two of the Jaffa go off to report. That leaves ... ten. One of the remaining Jaffa folds his helmet back. The symbol on his forehead gleams gold; he's a First Prime. It's the same symbol she saw back on the warehouse planet. The symbol that might have been Anu's. (Only, she supposes, it's Ereshkigal's symbol now.) The First Prime gestures at them, barking commands. Jack and McCluskey both look at her.

"He wants us to remove our packs and vests," she translates. The dialect's coming easier to her now.

The First Prime raises a hand to hit her. The other Jaffa lower their weapons to firing position.

"Hey-hey-hey--" Jack steps forward. "We don't speak snake, okay? She's doing you a favor."

 _"‹We're Tau'ri,›"_ she says in the oldest Jaffa dialect she knows. _"‹Either speak a civilized language, or let me translate yours for my companions.›"_ (Off to a fine start, as usual.) She unclips her backpack and drops it to the floor. McCluskey and Jack drop their packs as well. The First Prime lowers his hand. He hasn't hit her. Either well-trained or smarter than the average. Either is bad.

Vests next -- there go their radios -- then their now-empty equipment belts. With those they lose canteens, spare clips, compasses, and other odds and ends. Jackets and uniform shirts next. They're down to their pants, boots, and T's now.

"If this guy goes any farther, this could get embarrassing," Jack mutters.

"Suck it up, Nielsen," McCluskey says. "You don't have anything I haven't seen before."

They still have their GDOs, but without their shirts, those are plainly exposed. The First Prime points, silently ordering. They have nine staff weapons pointed at them. McCluskey goes first, tossing her GDO into the pile of gear. Dani and Jack follow suit. But the First Prime isn't done yet. He wants their wristwatches, too, and their ID tags. She wonders why, then remembers Teal'c didn't know what a wristwatch was the first time he saw one. This time Dani goes first. Wristwatches and tags all gone. All they have left is their clothes, now.

 _"‹You delay, Tau'ri. Give us all your magic.›"_ It's a very old dialect. There's only one word for weapons, technology, or machinery. _Magic._

 _"‹We have given you everything,›"_ she answers placatingly. (They can't fight now, and arguing will just get them hit.)

_"‹You wear magic on your face!›"_

Her glasses.

_"‹These are harmless. Only pieces of glass held together by metal. My eyes are weak. Without them, I cannot see.›"_

_"‹Show me.›"_

She takes off her glasses and hands them to him. No choice. He peers through them and smiles coldly. _"‹You are a cripple, Tau'ri. The enemy sends a crippled woman to try the might of our Goddess.›"_

 _"‹That is so,›"_ she answers, her voice even.

He crushes the glasses in his hand. _"‹You will not need your magic to behold the glory of the Goddess before you die.›"_ They're led away.

One _Goa'uld_ holding cell looks pretty much like another, even though everything's a blur now. She's glad of the breathing space, though. There are two guards on the door, beyond the force-shield and the bars. She sits down on one of the benches and rubs her aching eyes. Jack paces, looking for a nonexistent exit. Familiar behavior from the last time they shared a _Goa'uld_ prison cell. McCluskey looks out the doorway, assessing the guards, before coming over and sitting down beside her.

"What was that all about?" McCluskey asks.

"He didn't recognize my glasses. He said I wouldn't need them to behold the glory of his Goddess before she kills me." Dani shrugs infinitesimally. Just as well McCluskey knows the truth about how bad her eyes have gotten, even though it's only one more thing for her to worry about. "Um... from the fact he wanted to take them in the first place -- and our watches -- I'm kind of wondering where Ereshkigal got these Jaffa from. They don't seem to have ever seen _Tau'ri_ before in their lives."

"Interesting, but not immediately helpful," Jack says, stopping. "So... 'Ereshkigal'?"

Dani realizes the temple iconography wouldn't have meant anything to the two of them, though it told her everything. "Yeah," she says, sighing. "The pretty pictures in the audience chamber, the design of the temple... It's her."

"And she's been here for a while," McCluskey says.

"At least since she blew the other temple," Dani agrees. _At least two years._ "How could we have missed it?" If Jack had only let her keep the SGC searching for the _Goa'uld_ ten years ago. If their allies hadn't sold Earth -- and themselves -- down the river.

If.

"Never mind that now," McCluskey says. Jack comes over to them, but doesn't sit. "We get out of here, do as much damage as we can, find Hamilton and Hicks, and get to the Stargate. The question is: where do we go without GDOs?"

Dani glances at Jack, though she shouldn't; McCluskey's the boss this time out and they all have to remember the fact. She can't see his face clearly but she doesn't need to; his body language tells her he's reminding her of that. She sighs. She wishes, for a moment, Sammy and Mr. T were here. She doesn't know McCluskey nearly as well as she should, and though she knows McCluskey trusts Jack, she's not sure if McCluskey trusts _her_. The trouble is, both of them will see the same side of the problem. Sammy would see it from a completely different angle, and Teal'c would have a much better idea of how Ereshkigal thinks than any of them will.

"Chulak," Dani says reluctantly. "Still no iris on their Gate. They've always supported the SGC. Master Bra'tac's still alive, Rya'c's there; they both have GDOs and IDCs. We'll be able to get a message to the SGC from there." Or whoever gets through will be able to. She and Jack both know the address. She doesn't know if McCluskey does, and she has no way to write it down now.

" _Archimedes_ won't be able to take even just what we've seen on the ground in a fight," Jack says quietly. "And if there are a couple of _ha'tak_ in orbit..."

"We'll have to call in a few markers," McCluskey says calmly. "First thing to do is get the intel out."

First thing. After escaping, of course. They don't get long to brood over the impossibility of it -- or the fact that they don't really have a plan -- or the fact that the three of them are probably all going to be snaked -- or _dead_ \-- by sundown -- because very soon after that, the Lion Guards are back. Kyle and Pierce are with them.

 _With_ them. Carrying weapons.

"Hamilton!" McCluskey barks, as soon as she sees him.

"Hi, Colonel," Pierce says. "Are you going to be reasonable here?"

"Crap," Jack says, very softly. McCluskey recoils. She's just figured it out.

"No," Kyle says. "She isn't going to be reasonable, Major. You know that." He shakes his head sadly at the thought. "Maybe there's another way." Kyle doesn't sound happy, but he doesn't sound as if he has any intention of selling out his new best friend either. Dani puts a hand on McCluskey's arm.

"Colonel," she says in a low voice. "You can't reason with them."

"What kind of 'other way', _Sergeant_?" McCluskey says, as the cell opens and the force field drops.

"Well," Kyle says thoughtfully, "I expect The Lady can be a lot more persuasive than we can. Come on. It's time for you to meet her. Don't worry. She speaks English and everything."

They're marched to a more intimate Presence Chamber than the one in which they were disarmed. It holds a divan (currently empty) instead of a throne. The walls are covered with glazed tiles in deep jewel-tones. The images are only a blur to her, but it doesn't matter. She knows what they are. Iconography of the Sumerian underworld.

Pierce and Kyle take up positions beside the divan. Further protection for Ereshkigal, Dani supposes, should any of them succeed in arming themselves. The idea is that they'll hesitate before shooting their teammates. (It's a nice theory.) When they're all in position, Ereshkigal makes her entrance. Her host's a small woman, shorter than Dani. Her hair is black and gleaming, and hangs to her waist. Like Hathor, she's wearing a wide jeweled belt that's some sort of device similar to the ribbon-weapons they've been able to study. The more familiar ribbon-device is on her right hand (all blurs, but familiar blurs.) She wears a crown, a cloak, a wide collar-necklace, armlets, rings, high gilded sandals. Like every _Goa'uld_ Dani has ever seen, she's overdressed -- but in Ereshkigal's case, it's _underdressed_. Except for those items, and a lot of gold paint and makeup, the woman's _naked_.

Jack clears his throat uncomfortably and gazes determinedly at the floor. It doesn't help a lot, as the floor is black and so highly polished its like staring into a mirror. He can still see Ereshkigal perfectly well unless he closes his eyes, and Dani knows he won't.

 _"‹Kneel before your god!›"_ the First Prime says.

"Here we go," Jack mutters under his breath.

"Wait." Ereshkigal raises her hand. "You did not tell Us you had captured SG-1. Where are the others?"

Wait. _She recognizes them?_

"The _shol'va_ Teal'c. And the woman, Major Carter, who led the rebellion against Us ... before. These would not come without them. Where are they?" Ereskhigal turns to Pierce and slaps him so hard he falls. "You _lied_ to Us! You will die for that!"

"I didn't! I swear! Minister Teal'c's on Dakara. General Carter's in charge of the SGC. We're SG-35. All of us!" Pierce cries.

"Do you tell Us O'Neill and Danielle Jackson are not SG-1? _Lies!_ " She raises her hand over Pierce. The ribbon device begins to glow.

"He's telling the truth!" McCluskey shouts. She takes a step forward, and the nearest Jaffa grabs her. "These are all my people! The SG-1 you're talking about was decommissioned years ago!"

"Years?" Ereshkigal says, turning away from Pierce and walking over to Colonel McCluskey. "How many years?"

"Ten years ago," McCluskey says.

"And O'Neill has chosen to become your ... pet?" Ereshkigal reaches out and strokes Jack's face. He raises his head, trying to avoid her touch, but he can't. He clenches his jaw -- Dani knows this without seeing it -- but other than that, he doesn't move. The Jaffa are guarding the two of them -- not restraining them as they are McCluskey -- because neither of them has moved.

"That isn't General O'Neill," Kyle says doubtfully. "That's John Nielsen. He's a civilian. Dr. Jackson's sleeping with him, though," he adds helpfully. "And she was married to General O'Neill. He's dead."

Ereshkigal smiles -- she's close enough for Dani to see that -- and Dani thinks of spiders. She's so scared she wants to think of anything but the fact she's here, but her mind is blank. _Ereshkigal is speaking as if she's Hathor._

"You would give yourself to no one but O'Neill, would you, Our honeycomb?" Ereskigal says. Her attention's on Dani now. "Do you remember how We partook of him in Our bed as you watched? How We made him cry out for your pleasure?" Despite the Divine plural, Dani understands very well. They've called the _Goa'uld_ they were hunting Ereshkigal -- she's called herself that -- but she's...

"Hathor. You can't be Hathor. Hathor's dead. We killed her." Dani's voice is a whisper. But the fear's fading, because the sick coldness in the pit of her stomach isn't fear, now. It's rage. After Hathor, nothing in her life was ever the same. She and Hathor had been, in a way, co-conspirators, sharing a secret she could never tell.

Ereshkigal's eyes flash. "We are the mother of the Gods, and We are eternal. We cannot die."

"Hathor, huh? Then you gotta remember that little bath in liquid helium you took," Jack drawls, pulling Ereskigal's attention toward him. "Should'a slowed you down a little more, I'm thinking."

"Gods cannot die," Ereshkigal repeats. But for just an instant, she looks puzzled.

 _'Here awaits Ereshkigal in expectation of a glorious resurrection...'_ They know little of _Goa'uld_ reproduction, and nothing of the Queens. Hathor/Inanna and Ereshkigal are linked in mythology. A number of scholars considered them aspects of the same goddess, and Dani had theorized Hathor -- the _Goa'uld_ Hathor -- might be the sole archetype behind all the Love Goddesses of Ancient Earth. What if there never was a separate historical Ereshkigal? What if between the time Hathor escaped from the SGC and the time she showed up again she cloned herself, sealing her ... double ... away in a canopic jar as a sort of bizarre insurance against her own death? A sort of ... backup copy? She could even have arranged for it to know, if it ever awoke, that its original -- if the _Goa'uld_ , with their genetic memory, even have such a concept -- was dead, so it would take this other identity for its own. (Maybe it's a revenge thing. Or maybe the _Goa'uld_ just get bored and change their names every few millennia.)

"Tell me," Ereshkigal croons, regaining lost ground, "could you ever bear his touch again, after Ours? Has it been a true marriage?" Her eyes are black, so dark Dani can't see where the iris ends and the pupil begins.

"You know," Dani says, feigning thought. "I like Ba'al better. Ba'al doesn't ask me about my sex life."

"Right," Jack says, picking up the cue. "Straight to the threats and torture. I never thought I'd say it, but--"

 _"Insolence!"_ Ereshkigal shrieks. She doesn't even bother with the ribbon device; just backhands Dani across the face.

The pain clears her head, banishing the last of fear. She falls against Jack. She expects him to catch her, but he doesn't. He goes right down, pulling her over on top of him. He's using her for cover. She doesn't know why, or for what, but she helps, floundering around as if she's much more disoriented than she actually is. McCluskey's caught on too; she starts trying to break free of the Jaffa, pulling all the attention she can her way. And then Jack shoves Dani aside and comes up with a blade in his hand. Bootknife, something the First Prime missed. (She'd thought he stopped carrying it.) He doesn't come up all the way off the floor. He goes in right under the nearest Jaffa's armored breastplate. It's a killing strike, right into the symbiote pouch beneath. As the Jaffa crumples in agony, Jack grabs his staff-weapon and starts firing. Jaffa crumple and fall (she's always wondered why their armor isn't proof against their own weapons). Dani stays down, rolling across the floor to another dropped staff weapon. She manages to take out two Jaffa as they run. They're only black blurs against the polychrome brightness of the chamber walls, but they're a large enough target, and a staff weapon was never a precision weapon. The Lion Guards who stayed behind to defend their Goddess's retreat are all dead a few moments later. (Ereshkigal fled at the first sign of trouble, of course.) Pierce and Kyle are gone too.

McCluskey's getting to her feet. It looks as if she got the worst of it from the Jaffa who grabbed her, and then one of them fell on her after Jack shot him.

McCluskey picks up a staff weapon and racks it. "Colonel?" she says evenly.

Jack grimaces, but accepts it. "Find the armory. They might have taken our stuff there. And we need zats."

He's looking toward her now. Dani nods. "Jack," she says. "The armor. It won't fit me or Colonel McCluskey. But it'll fit you."

He doesn't like it, but he knows she's right, and having him dressed as one of Ereshkigal's guards might give them an edge. She and McCluskey put together a suit of undamaged Lion Guard armor while he strips. None of the guards was carrying zats. Too bad. It limits their options if they run into Pierce and Kyle again.

"Hathor?" he asks, as he dresses.

"Cloned herself, I think," she answers.

He grins tightly. "Lot of that going around."

Armoring Jack, though tactically a good idea, still costs them valuable time; they have to fight their way out of the Presence Chamber when a new set of Jaffa show up, but all three of them are armed now, and Jack's armor helps a lot. These Jaffa may have done a lot of drilling on the practice-field, but it's pathetically obvious they've never been in a real fight. Not 'real' Jaffa, then. No wonder Ereshkigal's been hiding. Whatever coup she's planning, she's still some ways from pulling it off. (Dani may never find out where Ereshkigal got her Jaffa, but if she can just kill the bitch once and for all, she promises herself she won't even care.)

#

"Colonel?" Jack says. "Any flight time?"

McCluskey shakes her head. "Strictly ground forces. And twice not something _Goa'uld_."

"Still not," Dani says when he glances at her. "I can babysit a _tel'tak_. That's about it."

"Too bad," Jack says regretfully. "If we could have gotten an _al'kesh_ up we could've given them something to think about. I'll have to do it alone."

"Jack!" she says, aghast.

"Change of plan. In this armor I can make it down to the airfield. I'll take one of the Death Gliders up and create a diversion. You two find the armory, grab our stuff, and find some things to set off. Once the diversion starts, make a run for the Stargate. One of us has to get the intel back to Carter."

"Hicks? Hamilton?" McCluskey asks.

"Probably already at the SGC," Dani says before she thinks. The other two stare at her. "Think about it," she says. "They're under Ereshkigal's spell. You may not remember what it was like, Jack, but _I_ do. They can get their GDOs back any time they want; if they won't quite give her the codes--" (she says before she thinks; with the new biometric GDOs you _can't_ give up your code) "--they'll certainly take her through. If she isn't there now, the only reason is because she doesn't want to be."

"She isn't. She knows Carter's waiting for her," Jack says grimly. "Colonel, find them if you can. If you can get them through the Stargate, they'll recover."

Getting them through the Stargate will be the hard part.

Decision's made.

"Good hunting," Dani tells him. She can't quite see his face, but she thinks he smiles -- pilots are superstitious about being wished 'good luck' and she's glad she remembered not to -- and closes his helmet again. He stomps off in the direction of the doors.

"Come on," she tells McCluskey. "Let's go find the armory. "I've got some ideas on where to look." The armory will be in the palace, not near the barracks, because _Goa'uld_ are paranoid.

"Lead the way, Dr. Jackson," McCluskey says.

"My friends call me 'Dani,' Colonel," she says. McCluskey pats her on the shoulder.

The symbols on the walls are Sumerian, not Egyptian, and the iconography of the palace is subtly different from the (ruined) _Goa'uld_ palaces Dani's been able to study, but she can read Sumerian; the symbols tell her where to go. Fortunately, they're large and raised; Dani leans in close, tracing them with her fingers. Unfortunately, to get to the armory, they have to head in the same direction the Lion Guards are going. The place is buzzing, and they do a lot of hiding. Dani doesn't really think there's any way out of this one. SG-35's a good unit, but they're not trained for this (not most of them, anyway), and two of their people are on Ereshkigal's side, willing to tell that bitch anything they can think of about what McCluskey's likely to try. The only thing they have going for them is the fact neither Pierce nor Kyle has ever worked with Jack. But Jack will be caught. He'll die. She pushes the thin red thread of despair down deep. There's no time for it now.

"Did all your old missions run this way?" McCluskey asks her, as they catch a short breathing space in a side-room.

"A lot of them," she says. Too many for her taste. "Do you know the address for Chulak?" she asks.

McCluskey shakes her head. "The SGC. Sites Alpha through Epsilon. They all have irises. No good."

"I'm sorry. I'll try to get you through to Chulak."

"Get yourself through. That's an order."

"Never good at following those, Colonel. We'll play it as it goes. Okay. Corridor's clear." As they start out, an alarm goes off and Jaffa start running the other way. They duck back again.

"Looks like John made it to the landing field," McCluskey says.

 _Jack_ made it to the landing field. Dani feels a spasm of relief; they won't take him alive now.

"Let's head for the Stargate," McCluskey says. "There's no point in--"

"No. I think we can provide an even bigger distraction." They still need to rescue Pierce and Kyle. No one gets left behind.

_'If you go through the Gate, you'll be going with a Team. Are you going to be a liability? Are you going to get them killed?'_

_'I won't. I'll give them my best. I'll bring them back.'_

_I promise, Jack._

She shoots the two Lion Guards guarding the door as McCluskey plays decoy. They go down before they even have time to bring up their weapons. Dani opens the door, peering myopically at the keypad. The two of them dash inside. She looks around quickly. The armory's enormous. It's empty. For the moment.

"Want to tell me what you're looking for now?" McCluskey says. She sounds exasperated. (Not a new thing in Dani's world.)

"Our stuff. Zats. Shock grenades. Some of the bigger _Goa'uld_ bombs: they'll take out an area of several square miles, and I can arm them."

"Here are our weapons," McCluskey says. They're in a rack near the door. "Your pistol. Nothing else, though."

She hands Dani one of the automachine guns. More stopping power than her pistol, and she knows how to fire it. She isn't qualified on it of course, but missions go bad; Jack made sure she at least knew how to shoot what the teams are currently carrying. At 'full auto' she might even be able to hit something. They head deeper into the armory. She squints, trying to bring things into sharper focus. At least the broad outlines are clear. A gleam of silver on the floor. She's navigating as much by memory as by sight.

"We'll have to be careful, Colonel. See those? Transport rings. We could have company at any time."

"I'll bear that in mind."

"Jackpot," Dani says a moment later. Along one wall is a row of tall glass cylinders. They're filled with -- alternately -- blue and yellow fluid.

"What?"

"Well, Colonel, this is the armory. I'm betting those cylinders contain the symbiote poison the _Tok'ra_ developed. Combined, the two produce a gas that's lethal to snakes. Stand back. I'm going to shoot them. We should be safe."

"'Should'?"

"Assuming we weren't snaked without knowing it and our _Goa'uld_ are playing possum. Or it's something else in there." Before McCluskey can say anything else, she opens fire, sweeping the stream of bullets across the wall of glass. The containers shatter. Liquid spills out onto the floor, quickly turning to vapor. The scent is sweet and acrid. Yes, it's the toxin; she's smelled it before. Her eyes sting and water at the fumes. And no, they haven't been secretly snaked, because they're both still alive. "Okay. Any Jaffa or snakehead who walks in here now is dead."

"Then let's keep looking."

They do, and they find something better than zats. _Intar_ \-- Jaffa training weapons. Better than zats becauseat full power they'll knock an adult Jaffa (or anyone else, for that matter) unconscious for hours. Working by touch, she sets two of them on 'Full' and hands one to Colonel McCluskey.

Then she finds the bombs.

They're hassock-shaped, about twice the size of a basketball, bright as jewels. They look like toys. But the one SG-1 encountered in Los Angeles would've vaporized most of Orange County; they're a hundred times more powerful than the most powerful nuclear weapon ever made. She drags several out into the middle of the room. This is more Sammy's department than hers (maybe even Jack's, in his new life), but she knows enough. She selects one, presses a series of buttons -- they're large, and the symbols are raised -- then the central one. It lights up and start flashing.

"Okay. We've got about ninety minutes to get out of here." The vapor from the symbiote poison's filling the entire armory now, turning the air hazy. She coughs as she picks up two more bombs.

"Souvenirs?" McCluskey asks.

"Sort of. Let's get back to the rings."

When they get back within sight of the entrance, the door's open and the entryway is filled with dead -- poisoned -- Jaffa. Dani smiles sadly. They're dead because of her. She sets the bombs carefully in the center of rings, then sets the ring transporter to seek out the nearest set of rings. It's hard work since she can barely make out the controls.

"The matter stream from the rings can be set to seek out the nearest set of rings to transport to. If there's a _ha'tak_ within range, it should get a nice surprise."

"And ... if there isn't?" McCluskey asks.

"Well, probably the rings will just deposit their cargo at the limit of their range. They shouldn't bring the bombs back here. I think." Destroying the _ha'tak_ \-- if it's out there -- is the important thing. She's betting that's how Ereshkigal will try to escape. Her power over her victims is broken by a trip through the Stargate, and she'll want to keep Pierce and Kyle under her control, but from the _ha'tak_ she can simply bombard Kheb and return. If she's gone anywhere, it's there.

McCluskey sighs. "Go ahead."

Dani goes back to the rings and arms the bombs quickly -- two minutes to detonation -- before moving back toward the ring controls again.

"Freeze, ladies."

It's Pierce and Kyle, and of course the symbiote poison doesn't affect them. McCluskey's carrying an _intar_ in addition to her field piece, but they'll never let her reach it, and Dani needed her hands free to program the controls. Her weapons are out of reach.

"Now, boys, don't be hasty," McCluskey says. Dani edges toward the controls.

"Doc, if you move, I _will_ shoot you," Kyle says. Dani sees a blur of black. He's still got his gun. Bullets, not an energy blast.

"Wouldn't that be disappointing?" she says, shifting toward the controls again just a bit. "I'm sure Ereshkigal has other plans for me."

"Well sure," he says. "But she can bring you back. One round in the stomach and you won't be going anywhere."

If she doesn't push that button, _none_ of them will be going anywhere. She grits her teeth and lunges for the panel as McCluskey leaps for Kyle.

Gunfire.

The feel of the button beneath her hand.

She drops to the floor automatically, hears the sound of the rings engaging. She curls up on the floor beneath the control panel.

She hasn't been shot. And they're all still alive.

"Colonel?"

_"Maggie!"_

McCluskey's down. Bleeding. And Ereshkigal's either dead or out of range, because Pierce and Kyle are ... back. But even while he was in thrall to her, Kyle couldn't -- quite -- bring himself to aim true. The bullet took McCluskey low in the left side, punching right through and out again. She'll live, even without a sarc, if she gets attention before she bleeds out. Kyle rips off his t-shirt, making a quick pressure bandage. Pierce adds his, and Kyle uses it to tie the other one in place. It's already soaked through; blood wells over his fingers and drips onto the floor as he ties the fabric off.

"What happened?" Pierce demands. "I don't--"

"The bitch kissed you and then everything went to hell. Come on," Dani says.

"Where's John?" Pierce asks.

"Up in a Death Glider distracting them. And this place is going to blow in less than ninety minutes."

Pierce picks up McCluskey. Dani picks up McClusky's gun. They run. The corridors are filled with dead Jaffa; the gas must have spread everywhere. When they reach the Presence Chamber, there's an explosion: the building rocks hard enough to knock them all off their feet, hard enough to send the golden statue of Ereshkigal toppling from its pedestal. Pierce drops McCluskey and she swears feelingly (at least she's still alive).

When they get outside, Dani realizes what happened. The _ha'tak_ she ringed the bomb up to wasn't in orbit. It was hovering -- or docked -- cloaked either way. It's crashed (fortunately not into the Stargate). What Dani can see looks like a war zone. The ground's covered with bodies and the scorch-marks of strafing runs. A lot of that's probably Jack's doing. (She won't think about him now.) They head for the Stargate at a dead run (it's so familiar it almost makes her laugh). She looks back once. Smoke. Wreckage. She can't really tell, but it looks like the _ha'tak_ came down at the top end of the valley. The docking pyramids and the palace sheltered them from the worst of the blast. The forest beyond is beginning to burn.

"Chulak," she tells them as she dials. "Bra'tac and Rya'c have GDOs. So does Teal'c, but he might not be there. The city's about two miles from the Gate, but there are guards stationed at the Gate. They'll help you. At least they'll take a message to Bra'tac."

"Goddammit, Danielle, you are _not_ staying here," McCluskey croaks. Her blood's running down Pierce's arm; a steady drip; but she's struggling with him now. "Hicks--"

Dani steps back and raises her weapon as the wormhole establishes. "I'll be right behind you," she says. "Go."

She backs away, not lowering her weapon. She can't miss at this range. Pierce ignores her, ignores McCluskey, walking up the steps and through. Kyle has a choice between staying and fighting with her, or getting McCluskey to safety.

"Go," Dani repeats. "They need you." Kyle tosses her a salute and follows the other two.

_I got them home, Jack. I didn't promise to go with them. Not and leave you behind._

She turns and runs. The landing field. If he could get his ship down, Jack will be there.

The devastation's impressive, even by the standards of the chaos SG-1 used to leave in its wake. Her heart clutches every time she sees a downed ship, but the wreckages are so thoroughly destroyed there's no way to tell who the pilots might have been. The barracks have been blasted. She reaches the landing field. Half the _al'kesh_ \-- the heavy bombers -- are burning on the field. Several of them have crashed. Others landed normally, and their crews lie dead around the hatches. Some of the dead don't have a mark on them. She thinks they may have died from the poison. Less than an hour now, she thinks, until the bomb she's set goes off.

 _"Jack!"_ she shouts. At the moment she doesn't care who hears her.

"Over here!"

He's jammed into the cockpit of a Death Glider. His ship was hit -- she sees scorch marks -- but by the time he was down there was enough symbiote poison in the air none of the Jaffa showed up to finish him off.

"You were supposed to leave," he says, as she pulls at his armor. The cockpit canopy's up, but the seat's jammed too far forward for him to move. She gets his collar and helmet off, also the breastplate. It doesn't help. He's still stuck.

"Leaving now," she says. "The others are already on their way to Chulak. Ereshkigal's gone -- or dead."

"Saw the fireworks display. That you?"

"Ringed a bomb up to the ship."

"Always a good idea."

She finally clambers into the cockpit with him and sets her feet against the control panel. She has better leverage than he did, and finally manages to force the seat back a few inches. He struggles free. But when he goes to stand, she hears him gasp.

"Don't think I'm going to be doing much jogging for a while."

"Hold on. I'll get something." There are staff weapons all around. She picks up a couple and comes back. "Here."

Using the staff weapon for support, he can manage to hobble, but not fast. He glances around at all the dead Jaffa then back at her. "Ereshkigal was stockpiling symbiote toxin," she says.

"Ah."

"And we'd better hurry. I set a second bomb. It's going to go off in about forty-five minutes, I think."

"Yeah, hurrying would be good."

But when they reach the Stargate, it's surrounded by people. Humans -- they must be. Ereshkigal's human slaves. All in white robes, and murmuring anxiously.

"Looks like Teal'c's going to have a lot of houseguests," Jack says. She steps forward.

 _"‹Hear me!›"_ she says. _"‹You have to leave this place through the chappa'ai! Everything here is about to be destroyed, but if you come with us, we will take you away to safety!›"_ She speaks in the Jaffa dialect the First Prime used, then starts to repeat her speech in English. A man with a gold pendant around his neck -- bright blur against white -- steps forward. He's holding a staff weapon.

_"‹We will not leave. We will stay and die for our Goddess.›"_

Ereshkigal's gone, her power's broken, but it doesn't matter. These people are still enslaved.

_"‹Your Goddess does not wish you to die. How can you serve her if you are dead? It is better to live.›"_

_"‹So the weak, the foolish, and the cowardly would argue. But I have taken their choice from them. No one will leave.›"_ There's nothing but cold arrogance in his voice. He lowers the staff weapon, pointing it at the two of them. She sees lightning sizzle at its tip as it powers up.

Jack fires.

The blast catches the spokesman square in the chest, knocking him backward into the crowd. They scream and run, and now Dani can see the DHD. The crystal in the center isn't red. It's black. It's been slagged. The DHD's useless. She looks back at Jack, eyes wide. "I've got to get back in there and shut down that bomb."

He turns -- carefully -- and looks back toward the temple. She wonders what he sees. There's a lot of smoke in the air now. "Not sure you can," Jack says quietly. "Come on. The ridge should give us some cover."

"Those people--"

"Made their choice when they let that guy smash their only way out of here," Jack answers. "Let's go."

She helps as much as she can, but their journey toward the wall of the valley is agonizingly slow. After the first few minutes, Jack keeps telling her to leave him. To go on ahead.

"Goddammit, Indy, do you think I'm going to watch you die?"

"Won't have to watch, Jack. We'll go together."

"Think that's a _better_ idea? Are you out of your _mind_?" He's gasping with the effort of trying to force his makeshift crutch to move him at something faster than a walking pace. She's coughing at the amount of smoke in the air. Her eyes burn. It's hard to breathe.

"'s what I want. Don't want to live without you. Never did. Won't do it. Not what you deserve. Never was." They're two different subjects, but never mind.

"Going to talk about that. When we get back."

She just smiles. Not a lot of breath for anything else. Too much smoke in the air.

Oddly, getting up the steps is easier than moving along the flat ground. She stays a few steps above him, ready to grab him if he starts to fall backward, keeping a lookout for any of Ereshkigal's human servants who might be following them (she'll be able to see their white robes), but nobody is. The entire forest above the city is burning now. She can see the flames clearly, because the sun is -- finally -- setting. It's a glorious sunset. The smoke turns the setting sun scarlet and rose gold. If it's the last one she'll ever see, it's worth going out on.

"The Colonel's going to be really mad at me when we get back," she says. Her voice is hoarse, but she talks to distract him. It's a long way to the top, and she isn't sure how long they have. Nor does she actually think that the ridge will protect them. "I pulled a gun on her at the Stargate to make the three of them go through."

"Good thing this is your last mission," Jack says.

"Yeah, but ... I think she was starting to get to like me."

"The famous Jackson charm."

They reach the top. Jack pulls her down quickly, flat to the ground. Despite the desperate need for speed, they crawl downhill, bellies pressed flat to the earth.

"How long do you think--" she begins.

The flash is first, and Jack presses their faces even further into the ground, covering her body with his. Before she can even register the fact there's too much light the shockwave hits, and they're flung into the air.

Blackness.

#

She wakes up what feels like a long time later. It's dark. She's cold. She's lying on her back, sideways to the incline of the hill. She tries to take a deep breath, and is rewarded with a stabbing pain in her chest. The air's full of smoke. It makes her cough. More pain.

"Ja-- Jack?"

"Right here. I'll never complain about Jaffa armor again."

"Can't... see." Even as well as she could before.

"Moons aren't up yet. You want to wiggle your fingers for me?" She feels the touch of his fingers on her palm. She concentrates, opens and closes her hand. Right. Left. "Okay. Toes?"

"I'm wearing boots."

"Wing it." It's harder, because she doesn't feel really connected to her body yet, but she manages that too. She hears him breathe a sigh of relief when she tells him she can move both feet.

"I want to sit up."

"Slowly."

He helps her, and she sits. Her head and ribs flare into bright agony. When she tries to draw her legs up under her, her right knee suddenly feels as if a spike's been driven into it. She gasps. "Think I wrenched my knee," she says. "But... we're alive?" She didn't expect it, and it puzzles her. They were at Ground Zero for a nuclear warhead capable of vaporizing a _ha'tak_.

"Guess you picked a dud bomb."

"Good thing." The last thing she remembers is lying face-down on the wooded slope below the ridge. She's still somewhere in trees, she can feel one at her back, and leans cautiously against it. The air's heavy with smoke, masking all other scents. She reaches up and touches her face. It's wet with blood, and she remembers again that her glasses are gone. She sighs. "I wish he hadn't broken them."

"Glasses?" Jack asks. Mostly to make sure she's tracking.

"Yeah. And you?"

"No glasses."

"Please."

#

One quiet word stops his banter. He owes her the truth. "Head hurts. Maybe concussion. Ribs. Ankle isn't any better. Back's okay."

The Jaffa armor probably saved his life and hers -- he held onto her as long as he could, trying to take the worst of it as they were flung downhill -- but he's pretty battered. Maybe a concussion. Cracked ribs; he thinks he may have landed on a rock at some point. A big one. And that ankle's going to make walking difficult -- broken or sprained; it hardly makes much difference. By the time he woke up, it was already dark. He shouted for her and got no answer. He'd crawled through the darkness until he found her, but hadn't dared move her. No armor to protect her, and she'd got a nasty lump on the side of her head. Calling her name hadn't woken her, and shaking her hadn't been an option. But she woke up. That's a plus.

"Radiation?" she asks.

He sighs. He hasn't wanted to think about that. "Probably at least some. We'll know how bad in a day or so. For what it's worth, I don't think the bomb went off at all. We wouldn't be here if it had. I think the armory just blew up."

"Shouldn't have set it in the first place."

He knows this part of things. The mission's over and Indy's cutting herself up about every thing she could have done differently. "Hey. We're not out of the woods yet," he says, to remind her this isn't the time.

"Literally." She laughs. It makes her cough, and then she's gasping for air. He moves in closer, easing her back against his shoulder.

"Ribs," she says, when she can breathe again. His, he knows she means.

"Other side." Most of it is.

"Okay," she says a few minutes later. "We won. Now can we go home?"

"Have to go for a little walk first."

If they can. Indy says she's wrenched her knee; she may not be able to walk at all. He's not sure where they are, but it's at least thirty miles to the other Stargate. (If Ereshkigal's left it intact. If they can reach it.) They're hurt. They have no food or shelter. They can't expect a rescue. Even if Carter doesn't assume they're dead, she won't know where they are. She'll have to assume Kheb's still enemy territory. So she'll send a UAV through the Stargate, if she can get one through. With all the smoke in the air -- and the fire -- she won't be able to pick up two people on the ground, either visually or with IR. And if she gets pictures back from the valley, she'll be pretty sure they're KIA. They're on their own.

"I'm tired," Dani says. He hears the refusal in her voice.

"Too bad," he answers. "Don't tell me you're too old for this?" It's cruel and unfair. But he can't let her give up now. If they don't make it to the Gate, they'll die, and he's never been a fan of death.

 _"Tired,"_ she repeats, but there's an edge of anger in her voice now, and anger keeps you alive.

"We'll stay here as long as we can. If the wind shifts, we're going to have to move. Forest's burning."

"Trees," she says, as if it's a curse.

"Trees. Nice, flammable, trees. And try to stay awake. From that lump on your head, you're probably concussed."

"I don't care," she mutters sulkily.

"I do. I'm not carrying you back to the Stargate."

She sits forward. He hears her breath hitch in pain. She brings up an hand, rubs it over her face and head. Hisses as she finds the lump. "Wish I remembered what the symptoms of concussion are," she says.

"Unconsciousness. Headache. Dizziness. Vision problems. Sensitivity to light. Disorientation. Exhaustion. And, of course, death." He -- however you define him -- has had enough concussions over the years to know the symptoms well.

"Death's a symptom?"

"So they say."

"Hard to tell if I'm having vision problems anyway."

"Yeah. About that?"

It might seem to be an odd time to be having this conversation, but they can't move until there's light. There really isn't anything else to do, and talking will keep them both awake. And it's really unlikely there's anything else alive on the planet to hear them, or they'd already be dead.

He hears her take a long shallow breath. "I'm forty-six. I need bifocals. I cheated on the eye exam at the Quarterly Review; they don't pay a lot of attention really. The Colonel told me to update my prescription after I told her, so I did. I... I was going to tell you."

"When we got back."

"Jack--"

"John," he corrects. He'd say it's an artifact of that knock she took on the head, except for the fact she started calling him 'Jack' back at the ruined temple. And the fact she moved out of their house the week before that. Then when they hit the snakes, McCluskey fell off the wagon too. McCluskey'd wanted him to take back a job he doesn't want any more. (He likes his retirement. Even if it isn't going particularly well at the moment.)

"No. _Jack_. You said you didn't want to pretend. Let's not. You're Jack. The man I ... treated very badly. It doesn't matter if you don't remember. I do. I can't face that again. Doing that."

This is it. Not anything to do with her talk with McCluskey after all. Odd to think of finding this out as being as important to him as the mission, but the mission's over -- or to be more precise, this is a side-trip; the mission will be over when they get home. But they've pretty thoroughly destroyed The Garden of the Gods, and Ereshkigal's either dead or gone. (It'd be nice to be sure which, but you can't have everything you want.) He doesn't want to think about Ereshkigal calling Dani 'honeycomb' back there in the palace, and the rest of what the snake said was just ... disturbing. So back to Topic A. Injured, stranded on an alien plane, a great time for The Relationship Talk. But they're on a Gate Team. You seize the moment.

He just wishes his head didn't hurt quite so much.

"This isn't Washington. And I'm not a General."

"I'm a General's wife."

"Were. He's dead."

"No you're not. You're here."

"I'm not him."

"You're Jack O'Neill. You just don't ... know what I had to do ... for my country." She laughs; a bitter whisper. "Oh, god, do you know how many Jaffa I killed today? How many _people_? I didn't even think twice. There was a time I wouldn't even kill twelve System Lords just because I would've killed Simon, too."

Talking makes her cough, and then she's gasping for air again. He tightens his arms around her, supporting her ribs. She puts her hands over his. They're cold. Spring night on Kheb; it's cold out here. His chainmail shirt and pants are intact; they're heavy, and moving in them makes him ache, but they're all in one piece, even now. Her pants and T-shirt are torn; not much protection.

"Dani?"

"Don't... change the... subject."

"Just prefer you didn't die on me here."

"Won't."

He waits until he hears her breathing ease. "It's no badge of honor to kill people. But sometimes it has to be done. If you hadn't released that poison -- and sent those bombs up to the ship -- we'd all be dead now. Or snaked. Would that be better?"

"I didn't even try to find another way."

"Sometimes there isn't one."

"I would have used it on Dakara, too. Told Sammy to. I thought about it. Take out the Jaffa with symbiotes. Send a message."

"No you wouldn't. I know you."

"No. You know _her_. Indiana. But she's dead, Jack. I'm all that's left."

He knows it isn't true, but it's hard to find the words. "No. Older. Seen a little more. But if you really were who you think you are, you wouldn't have tried to save those people at the Stargate. You'd just have shot them." She makes a faint sound halfway between a groan and a whimper. Disagreeing. "Timarek. Got us back," he adds. And set up a trade agreement, too. Just the way she would've done in the old days. She's been hurt. A lot. But she can heal. The fact she cares so much now tells him it's true.

"I never really..." She stops, as if she's forgotten what she was going to say.

#

_Daniel's dead_. It's inadequate, and probably not entirely true. _Daniel's gone?_ As far as Jack knows, Daniel's been gone for years. _I never really let go of him, but I have now?_ A fine time to bring that up. And it seems as if it's so long ago, not just -- oh, god, was it only just this morning she saw the temple? It seems as if those events belong so far in the past they might have occurred on the day of Daniel's Ascension, as if they were settled and dealt with and buried beneath the years that separate her from that day and this. So she says none of those things. The fact Jack has such ... faith ... in her ... hurts. (Well, everything hurts right now. Her head. Her knee. Her ribs.) She can't believe he's right. She's freezing and feverish and _his_ bright idea is a thirty-mile hike that will probably finish killing them both.

"Moons coming up," she says. There's a foggy silver light in the East -- has been for the last few minutes -- and the outline of the trees is visible now. She holds up her hand in front of her face. It's blurry. She can't make out her fingers clearly, even from a few inches away. Not good. There's a lot of smoke in the air. More than before, she thinks.

"Better move," he says reluctantly. "Get to the stream. Follow it to the Stargate. If the fire heads this way..."

Neither of them mentions what they both know -- that the stream is shallow, and won't provide them with any protection if the fire decides to burn over them. And they can't outrun it.

They pull themselves to their feet, using the trees for support. Pain and vertigo make gag, but there isn't anything much in her stomach to bring up. They grope carefully along the slope, moving like somnambulists. She can hear Jack breathing, harsh and rasping; the occasional strangled cough. It would hurt too much to turn and look at him, though, so she doesn't. Jack walked out of Iraq with a broken leg once; she's certain he can make it to the Gate now. She's the weak link, and she knows he won't leave her. It should comfort her, but it only irritates her.

The moons give the illusion of light more than the reality. Every few feet they stop to rest, holding onto trees. Her knee has settled into a steady endurable agony; it's okay so long as she doesn't try to flex it. You can deal with anything so long as it stays the same.

Change is what hurts.

#

"Move... your... butt..." Jack's voice is close to her ear. She's fallen asleep holding onto a tree.

"Can't." She leans her forehead against the trunk. It hurts, but she does it anyway.

"Come on."

"Please."

"Look. Just look back up the mountain."

Opening her eyes, raising her head, is impossible, but she does it for him. She inhales unwarily, and chokes on the smoke in the air. She turns, clinging to the tree. How will they go on when they get off the mountain? There was only underbrush along the stream -- nothing to hold on to -- and they lost the staff-weapons in the explosion. She looks up. Blinks. Remembers just in time not to shake her head to clear it. It won't help anyway. She can barely see the trees, and she knows Jack knows that, but through the trees there's red light, glowing against a pall of smoke.

"Forest fire," Jack says. Between pain and smoke his voice is a rasping croak. "The blast area's acting as a firebreak, but if it gets big enough, it'll go right around. Come on."

She closes her eyes in submission and pushes away from the tree.

#

They're standing on flat ground. It's still dark -- darker now; the smoke's thicker -- and the moons are heading over the ridge. It's springtime -- the days and nights are nearly equal -- and a thirty-hour day means a fifteen-hour night. They're both coughing constantly now. It's hard to breathe. But they can hear the stream. The sound makes her throat clutch. She's desperate for water, and knows Jack must be too. It was on the left going up. It should be on the right now.

When they're halfway to the stream, Jack trips and falls. The tree he grabs for support pulls out of the ground and he goes down, gasping in pain as he tries -- unsuccessfully -- to break his fall. She starts to drop to her knees beside him, but the right knee feels as if it will break before it will bend. She gets down anyway, the leg out straight in front of her.

"Jack?"

"That was fun," he whispers after a moment. He's on his back. His face is a pale blur. She touches his cheek. It's cold, wet with sweat, greasy with soot from the smoke.

"Stay down," she says.

"Yeah."

She hesitates a moment, assessing. "I'm going to see how far the stream is. It sounds close. I'll be back."

"Thought I'd ... go out ... for a beer."

She knows she can't get up again, so she crawls. Hands and knees. Knee, actually, her bad leg dragging behind her because it won't bend. Small sharp stones and twigs dig into her skin, and the position's agony. Her ribs hurt. Her chest hurts. Her stomach hurts, as if someone has kicked her there. But -- just as she remembers -- there's a long shallow stony bank to the stream, and it isn't very far.

She reaches the stream and drinks, cupping the water to her mouth because she doesn't dare lean over. The cold burns down all the way into her belly, making her head spin, nauseating her. Her head hammers and the world spins. She fights to keep from throwing up what she's drunk. And she needs to get water back to Jack, but how? She strips off her t-shirt. It's a filthy mess. She dips it in the water, cleaning it as much as she can. Then she soaks it thoroughly, and wads it gently. She balances the bundle on her back; she has no other way to carry it; and crawls back to Jack.

She touches his face to rouse him when she gets there; her hands are wet and cold. Filthy. "Water. Not a lot. Sit."

She helps him up. He sucks all the moisture from her t-shirt that he can. After the return trip, there isn't much, but it's something. When he's done, she takes it back and wipes his face, then her own, then drapes the rag around her neck. No point in even trying to put it back on until it's dry.

"Far?"

"No."

"Race you."

They crawl to the stream. For one thing, the air's clearer down here; for another, neither of them can stand. She helps him drink, and then drinks again herself, and she _does_ throw up this time. (She wonders if this nausea's the first stop on the road to radiation poisoning, or if it's something else.) They should move away from the stream -- it's damp and cold here -- but they don't. He lies back. She huddles beside him.

That's all.

Her own coughing wakes her. Instinctively she coils up, but suddenly there's even more pain than before. Ribs. Abdomen. She gasps and thrashes, the desperate need to _breathe_ forcing her into a sitting position. By the time her breathing's under control, her head is pounding again, and her ribs and leg are a wracking fire.

Day on Kheb.

Everything's blurry, and she can't see very far. The air is heavy with smoke, darkening the sky and filling the air with its smell. She's so cold she aches. She feels the ground around her until she finds her t-shirt -- still damp -- and pulls it on. No improvement. She looks toward Jack. He's sitting up now. She can't see him even as well as she ought to be able to.

She's going to die here.

 _'It's not really death...'_ The catchphrase woven through her thoughts for so long, shadow touchstone to her true one, mocks her now. The Universe, she's learned, only grants wishes when you don't want them any more. She wanted to come to Kheb and die. And now she is.

"Okay?" she asks. Her voice is hoarse and her throat's so raw it hurts. Her eyes burn. She'd like to try for something light and witty, but she can't think of anything right now.

"Good," he says.

"Going to go find that tree you tore down last night. We need a walking stick." Even that long a speech makes her want to cough again. She refuses to give in. He nods. (She's pretty sure.) She drinks before she gets up, washes her face over and over until her eyes stop aching a bit. This time the water stays down.

Walking isn't too hard, after the first couple of minutes, though (she thinks) she now knows what it would have been like to become very old. She totters slowly along, moving carefully; she doesn't want to fall. Have they been lucky to have survived even as long as this? Or is it cruel to survive to die slowly? She'd wanted to die in the field. She'd wanted to die with Jack. She's getting everything she ever wanted -- she should be happy. At least the rest of 35's survived, if McCluskey made it back to the SGC. Dani hopes she did.

She's not sure if she finds the specific tree, but she finds a birch sapling that's been down for several seasons. The white papery bark peels away from the wood beneath when she picks it up, and she balances it on the remains of its shallow root-cluster. The rest of the twigs and smaller branches are dry and brittle and come away easily. It will do.

Walking back is easier with something to lean on.

"I was about to go looking for you."

"Easier with this." She braces herself and offers him the makeshift walking stick. He uses it to lever himself to his feet. She steadies him. He reaches for her face. She leans her head lightly against his chest instead. She has no intention of letting him look at her pupils. She's pretty sure she knows what he'd see.

"And... how many fingers am I holding up?" he says (though he probably isn't holding any up right now).

"Ask Sammy. She's the astrophysicist. And she's still got her glasses." He lets it go. They stand there like that for a moment. He's leaning heavily on the walking stick. His free hand rests on her hip. IShe shivers in the cold.

"I'd offer you my shirt, but--"

"The weight would probably knock me flat."

"Let's go."

Thirty miles. An impossible distance. They begin.

The sun climbs toward midheaven through a pall of smoke. The exertion warms her and then quickly exhausts her. They're moving slowly, following the stream where the ground's hard and flat, but they still have to stop and rest every few hundred yards. There's a constant tickle in her throat and chest.

At midday the wind shifts, and suddenly smoke is pouring down the mountainside toward them, thick and heavy as the fog that sometimes blanketed the Berkeley hills when she lived and taught there. Jack makes them both lie down with their faces over the stream. There's a margin of clear air there, just a few inches over the surface of the water, but her eyes still burn and ache, no matter how many times she dunks her face in the stream, and now she can't stop the coughing. She's terrified fire will follow the smoke, but it doesn't.

When the smoke clears, they go on.

She'd thought she could go to Chulak, to Pegasus, and leave him behind. She suspects she was kidding herself. Even if she'd managed to get to either place he'd probably have been right behind her, no matter what he had to do to get there. Being in so much pain for so long strips the mind down to essentials. Watching the absolute determination with which he keeps moving, though every step is costing him agony. Like the Little Mermaid, walking on knives to live in the world of men. Like Jack, pretending to be a fifteen-year-old boy, because he had to. Like Jack, becoming a Washington insider, because he had to. Jack will always do whatever he has to do.

There's some understanding there, just out of her reach. Something that would let her solve all her tangled problems if she could only grasp it. But she's so tired...

#

It's the end of the first day. Sun's gone down and Jack's called a halt. They're sitting by the stream. When they've gathered their strength, they'll move into the brush and bed down for the night. She has no idea how far they've come, or how far they have to go. It doesn't matter. She knows they won't get there. But Jack wants to try, and so they will.

"What were you going to do when you got back?" he asks. After she left the team, he means.

"Run away," she says. "Not now." She reaches out and finds his knee.

She wants to lean over for a drink, but the last time she tried that -- bending forward -- it hurt too much. It doesn't feel so much like a cracked rib now. Maybe internal bleeding. She hopes not. She doesn't know how far it is to the Stargate (how far they've managed to come today), but she does know nobody's coming to rescue them. She lies down, awkwardly, on her side -- that hurts too, though not as much -- and gets her face down to the water to drink. She coughs. Spits. Wishes she had her glasses. (Not that they'd help now, but she misses them.) She coughs again, and tries not to, because it hurts.

"You all right?"

"Peachy," she says, sitting up. "You?"

"Oh, fine. So, plans?"

 _I want to get married._ The thought shocks her, but it's true. She does. She wants to marry him. Again. She wants to make him miserable. They'll have screaming fights this time -- open ones, out loud, nothing hidden, nothing deferred. They'll be the scandal of the SGC. He'll regret the first time he ever set eyes on her. He'll regret taking her to Abydos. He'll regret not shooting her there. She hiccups, half laugh, half sob. And actually, since they aren't getting out of this alive, she wants to marry him _right now_. Here. To take him, to be his, for all the time they have left. Because that's the answer, the one she's been searching for all this time. Jack did what he had to do -- and so did she. She hurt him. They hurt each other. No choice. No chance to ask his forgiveness. No chance to tell him she forgave him all along, for each thing, for everything, to tell him he never stopped being the man she met and fell in love with, no matter what he'd thought of himself.

She closes her eyes. She loves him and she doesn't want to live without him -- to _be_ without him -- and if he doesn't want to live without her either, maybe that's all happiness really is...

"Dani?"

"Nothing I guess I can actually do."

#

He hears the defeated note in her voice, and he's surprised to find -- after everything, even feeling as if he's spent the day back in the mines (pick a world; he was imprisoned in mines on several alien planets), even after she's told him she refuses to live without him -- he can still feel blindsided and hurt by her evasions. As if he's closer to his fictional age than his real one.

"Ascension?" he asks. Because that's all he can think of.

 _"What?"_ she asks incredulously, and he knows he's guessed wrong.

"Then what?" he asks.

There's a long hesitation before she answers. "You asked me a question once and I gave you the wrong answer. That's all."

That isn't much help. He isn't in any mood for riddles. He has -- _O'Neill_ has -- asked her a lot of questions over the years, and not all her answers have been right. Some of them, in fact, have been spectacularly wrong. But it's always been her job to guess. "Want to throw me a bone here?"

There's a long pause. "I just thought... If you still had that ring..." she says hesitantly.

His question. _John's_ question, not Jack O'Neill's. Her wrong answer. "Great timing," he says. "Why now?" Between the pain and the fact it's the last thing he ever expected to hear from her, the words come out much more harshly than he intends. She pulls away, hugging herself tightly.

#

"Sorry." Why should she think the offer would still be on the table just because suddenly she wanted it to be? "Just..." _I realized I could live with making you miserable better than I could live without you._

"We'll get married when we get back."

They aren't getting back. She's sure he knows it too. But right now fantasy is better than reality. "We-- You-- I--"

"You said 'yes.' Done is done," he says. _Decision's made._

She wasn't really prepared for the answer. For questions, for refusal, for negotiation, yes. And suddenly she feels as if she needs to warn him. "I'll make you miserable."

"Fine."

"Jack, I--"

"Come here."

She moves cautiously to close the few inches between them. He puts an arm carefully around her waist. She thinks of the old joke about porcupines mating.

"Soon as we get back," he says firmly. "Gate Room." He takes her hand. "Dance with me," he says.

"Take me to bed." They crawl away from the stream -- and into the trees. He heaps as much of the forest detritus around them as he can and they huddle together for warmth.

#

Second day. They wake at dawn. The air's still full of smoke -- hard to tell, but Jack says it's less than yesterday. Everything's ... hazy. Both inside and out, at least for her. They're both weaker now, and today, as she's leaning over the stream coughing -- it's worst in the morning -- she thinks she sees dark drops of blood swirl away on the water. She coughs again, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. Yes. She's coughing up blood.

At least she isn't hungry any more.

That's the last time she remembers days, and beginnings. Sometimes she'll notice she's been talking for a while -- her voice a whispering croak -- but she has no idea what she's been saying, so she stops. They're both coughing all the time now, and Jack has to lean on her to walk, slowing them further. He kept dropping the walking stick and falling, so now she leans on it and he leans on her. She's dying. They both are. Sometimes she's woken up and they're lying beside the stream. She doesn't know whether they stopped for a rest or just collapsed. Sometimes she discovers she's walking and can't remember when she started. She shakes with cold, or maybe fever, because she never feels warm no matter what. Her knee feels like somebody's driven a nail into it. Her abdomen's sore all the time now. Bruising or bleeding? She doesn't know.

#

"Proud of you," Jack says. "I was always proud of you."

"I know," she says.

She's not sure he knows what he's saying any more. She could be wrong; her lucid moments have been getting farther apart. Not even terror is enough to keep her mind clear. Not any more. She doesn't know how long they've been walking, but against all odds they've reached the temple. Where it was, anyway. (Just a charred spot now. A few standing walls.) That means the Stargate's only three hours away -- at a brisk walking pace for healthy people. She coughs, and spits blood.

"No," he says. "Both of us. Always. No matter what."

"Rest here," she gasps. _Just for a few minutes._ She leans him back against the wall, letting it take most of his weight. Her back sings with the released strain, and she barely manages to turn the fall into a controlled slide for both of them. When she lands, the pain in her knee, in her head, in her abdomen shocks her into full absolute clarity for the first time since she can remember. She glances at Jack, worried. He smiles at her, though it's as much of an effort for him to smile as it is for her not to cry at the sight.

"Pay attention," he says.

"I am," she promises. She is.

"He was... proud of you. For... everything you... had to do. And so am I."

 _Why are you saying this?_ she wants to say. It feels too much as if he's saying goodbye. And they can't say goodbye. They have too much more to say to each other. "I'll remember," she says. She laces her fingers through his, just to hold. And because it's just about the only part of either of their bodies that doesn't actually hurt.

#

They reach the Stargate. She can see it. They're here. And the DHD's intact. They're going to make it. Only a few more yards. Almost there.

And Jack's knees buckle, and his arm slips from her shoulders. He falls to hands and knees on the white stone, sobbing with the pain of it, then chokes and gags and vomits. Blood stars the white stone path. She starts to cry.

"Dial," he whispers.

Tears blind her. Everything's blurred and shimmery, dancing and doubling in her sight, and she can't remember why.

"Dial--" he gasps again, the word garbled by wracking coughs. She scrubs at her eyes, and sees pools and constellations of red on the stone, and staggers to the DHD, dragging herself along with the stick.

Chulak. They were supposed to go to Chulak. They went to Chulak and met Teal'c half a lifetime ago. She clings to the DHD to hold herself up. The edge presses against her abdomen, and she whimpers at the pain. The stick falls from her hand. She runs her fingers over the dial, forcing herself to focus. It takes all her remaining strength. The address for Chulak. The third address she ever learned.

First was Abydos. _The Coverstone, massive and cool beneath her hands._

Second was Earth. _The shattered cartouche in the warrens of Nagada._

Third was Chulak. _Ferreti in the SGC Infirmary, the glyphs glowing green against the computer screen._

The symbols dance now in her mind's eye. She has to trace them by touch to be sure of them; they melt and twist, even with her face inches away from the dial. If they can't get to Chulak, Sammy will never know what happened to them.

She presses each one carefully (hearing the grind and clunk as the inner ring spins and the chevrons lock), and then the red crystal. The Stargate engages. Even though she was expecting it, it startles her; she inhales deeply and begins to cough again; deep chest-rattling coughs, and when she stops, the DHD is wet with her blood. She feels as if she's torn something loose inside. She keeps blinking and shaking her head because everything seems to be getting dark, and she knows it's coming from inside, because it's full day and she can feel the sun, though the day is cold -- colder now than it was a few minutes ago. She's too weak to stand now, and she can't breathe. She keeps trying, but all she can manage are shallow gasps that don't bring in enough air. She sinks down awkwardly; down on the okay knee, bad leg splayed straight out in front of her, and once she's down, she drags herself back along the gravel and finds Jack. He's lying on his side. Still breathing, but his eyes are closed. She crawls through the blood into his arms -- close enough -- and looks back at the Stargate. She can see it. It's bright. And everything else is sort of blurry and dark and tunnel-y.

 _We have to go now, Jack._ She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out except a whispery croak. _Have to go now, Jack._

She knows this feeling. She knows what dying feels like. She's an informed consumer. Somehow, though, a miracle always ushered her back into life again. _Not this time,_ she thinks. She gropes around until she finds Jack's hand. Holds it. Jack's fingers tighten slowly around hers.

_Jack._

The Event Horizon's so blue. She has always loved it. "...love..." she whispers. It takes all the breath she has left.

Tiny blue point of light as her vision tunnels.

Nothing.

#

 

 

__

_**

XII. Terms of Endearment

**_

__

For a long time she wavers in and out of consciousness. It's too much effort to understand where she is, or what consciousness means. She sleeps, wakes. It's the SGC Infirmary. She sleeps, wakes. Sammy and Erin are there.

"You're going to be okay, Dani," Erin says. Sammy takes her hand.

"Jack," she says. Or tries to. No sound comes. Only her lips move. But they know.

"He's right here," Sammy says. "John's right here."

#

It's a mystery, and one they can't solve. A day and a half ago -- a week after the rest of 35 came back from Chulak (McCluskey's still on bed rest, but she's going to be fine) -- the SGC received Rya'c's IDC. He and several other Jaffa brought the two of them through. John and Dani were dressed in Jaffa robes. They were heavily sedated. There wasn't a mark on either one of them. No broken bones. No concussions. Not even a scratch. Rya'c said he found them lying beside the Chulak Stargate.

"That's a damned lie," Dani says indignantly. She still feels disoriented; a feeling she associates with recovering from surgery. But -- obviously -- no surgery was done.

"Maybe," Sammy says patiently. "But I couldn't really tell him so. So... what _did_ happen?"

She was in -- briefly -- when Dani awoke (this time), and is back now to try to get some answers. It's an hour after they've managed to stay awake for more than five minutes at a time. Dani doesn't remember any of the other brief awakenings; Sammy says Pierce and Kyle came to see them, and even McCluskey insisted on being wheeled in. She and Jack have been unconscious for over 24 hours. Now they've been fed, but not allowed to get up. Erin isn't sure what they were drugged with, but whatever it was, it was strong, and she wants to keep them under observation for another day before letting them out of here.

"Sarcophagus," Dani says. She's been refused coffee, but another set of her new glasses has been brought from her office, so the world's in focus again at last.

"Way to bet," Jack says. He's in the next bed over. (He looks good. Not a scratch on him.) "Nice to think T still cares."

"You got through to Chulak and Teal'c put you in a sarcophagus?" Sammy asks. McCluskey, Pierce, and Kyle have already been debriefed about the rest of the mission, but since McCluskey was wounded and Pierce and Kyle were englamored, Jack and Dani will need to fill in a lot of gaps there, too. But later.

"We got to the Stargate." Dani frowns. She's not really sure about that. She remembers (she thinks) stopping to rest at the temple, but everything's so muddled. She glances at Jack. (She'll have to remember to call him 'John,' here, but she knows the truth.) "Dialed Chulak?"

He shrugs. "Don't remember much after the temple."

Sammy looks at him suspiciously. "Really?"

He stretches and folds his arms behind his head -- partly, Dani suspects, for the sheer joy of being able to. "General. I had busted ribs, a busted ankle, a concussion, possible radiation poisoning, internal bleeding, and probably pneumonia. I'd just walked about thirty miles. I'd gone several days without food -- don't ask me how many, because I don't know how long we were on Kheb. So _no_ , I don't remember much after the temple."

Sammy looks back at her. "My knee hurt," Dani offers meekly.

"Dislocated kneecap. Broken ribs. Concussion. Maybe a pierced lung, maybe just radiation poisoning," Jack recites in bored tones. "If you think I missed the blood, you're wrong," he tells her. It's okay now, because they're both alive and safe. And it's fun to tease Sammy.

"All I know for sure is we weren't wearing Jaffa robes on Kheb," Dani says firmly. "And we were hurt." They died there, she suspects. She knows they were dying.

"And you agreed to marry me," Jack says. "Finally. I remember that."

"Ack," she says weakly. (She remembers that, too.)

"In the Gate Room," Jack adds, gazing at the ceiling with a dreamy expression on his face. "You agreed to marry me in the Gate Room."

She stares at Sammy helplessly. Sammy's smiling; relief they're alive; relief they're here. She leans over Dani's bed. "He can't marry you in the Gate Room," she whispers in Dani's ear. "Regulations."

"Commissary?" Dani suggests.

Sammy kisses her cheek. "Try to get some rest. I think you're going to need it."

Sammy leaves. So does Erin. Dani looks over at Jack.

"Think we can sneak out of here?" he asks.

She sighs. "No."

"We're back," he says.

She hadn't imagined -- hadn't really believed -- in a future that held getting back here alive. Accepting the reality will be complicated. "Alive," she says. He'd believed in no other possibility. She knows that. And they'll probably never figure out how it managed to happen. Or _why_ , more to the point, as at least part of 'how' is fairly obvious.

"Stuck in the Infirmary for another twenty-four hours," he groans. There's a moment of silence. "You _sure_ we can't sneak out of here? After all, we--"

She climbs out of bed, unclipping her monitors.

"Erin, can we _please_ go home?"

"Dani, what are you doing out of bed?" Erin looks up as Dani come to the door of her office.

"If I have to listen to him complain for the next 24 hours, I'll kill him. And I just agreed to marry him. Please send us home."

"Congratulations. And no."

"You said yourself it was just a sedative."

"A compound I've never seen before. I don't know how much you were given, or when. I have no idea what happened to you before that, and neither do you. I want to play it safe."

"I want shoes. I want coffee. I want to go _home_."

"I could make it 72 hours of observation."

"Isn't there _any_ place else but the Infirmary?"

Erin sighs. "All right. I'll put you in Isolation Quarters. But please, I beg you, remember the cameras and audio will be on."

She smiles in relief. "I promise."

They're sent to Isolation Quarters, but they still aren't let to have clothes. Bathrobes and slippers, though. An improvement over nothing but scrubs. And there are double beds in Isolation Quarters. (At least they can snuggle later. Chastely.)

She thinks it's unfair for Rya'c -- or Teal'c, even -- to have brought her -- them -- back from death and then doped them up again. Why? Obviously so neither she nor Jack would see anything they weren't supposed to see. She wonders what those things were. (Aside from the fact the Jaffa have a sarcophagus, which is pretty obvious, and which -- it's equally obvious -- isn't something they really feel a need to conceal.) She'll probably never know, just as she'll never know for certain whether Ereshkigal died in the sky over Kheb.

(Ereshkigal is Hathor, and knows her secrets.)

Even going from bed to wheelchair tires her (or, more accurately, makes her aware of the residual drug in her system), though she stubbornly gets up the moment the door closes and walks to the couch. Jack, meanwhile, has boundless energy, bouncing and pacing around the common room, glancing at the cameras now and again.

"Glad you twisted Hunnicutt's arm."

"Rather do that than murder you. She just wants to make sure this isn't a slow-acting poison."

"Yeah, that'd be wacky."

"She told me to remember this place was being monitored full-time. Audio and video."

"Guess we're going to have to wait until we get home, eh?"

"And not say things like that."

"Last I heard, heterosexuality was still permitted between civilian consultants to the Air Force."

"I'm pretty sure the Air Force doesn't have sex."

"'Aim High'. So. What do you want to do for the next 24 hours?"

"I have a week's worth of paperwork sitting in my office." Not that she's going to be allowed to go there.

"Right. What kind of cake?" He obviously has no interest in her workload. Or his, for that matter. She stares at him. _Cake?_

"Wedding cake," he reminds her.

 _Oh._ Yes, they're getting married. She isn't changing her mind about that. She isn't stupid. She's just ... well, 'terrified' isn't exactly the word. It's just that for so very long she's had a good idea of what was going to happen next. And now she doesn't. "Chocolate. Sammy says the Gate Room's against regulations."

"Somewhere else then. Guests?"

She thinks of her last wedding and hesitates. Satin and lace and pearls. Hundreds of strangers. "We could have the... the reception at the house. And the ceremony, if we... If it could just be witnesses. Sammy, and... SG-35?" They could have been her family; she's about to lose them, but they'll still be Jack's. "Or you might have..."

"No," he says. "I like the guest list just fine."

#

"Did your mission proceed as planned?"

"Oh yeah. Gerak and Per'sus are going to be playing 'who's got the sarcophagus' for months. Neither one's going to believe the other. And they won't be willing to trade again soon, because for some reason, the _naquaadah_ and all the drugs vanished, too."

"You are welcome to both, O'Neill. I am certain you will find a use for them. And the second task?"

"Gee, T, I wish you wouldn't use words like 'task'. I think it cheapens our relationship."

"Oh, come on, Jack. Just tell him. They used to be his friends."

The speaker stands with her -- its -- teammates. They are images out of Teal'c's past. Images that will never change, never grow old.

SG-1.

"I still don't understand how I got ... younger," the robot grumbles.

The woman (simulacrum of a woman) snickers. Nearly two decades ago, SG-1 went to a planet called Altair. There, they were copied by a construct known only as Harlan -- duplicated, condemned to an eternal life as unchanging robot copies of themselves. Harlan meant them to remain on its world as companions and caretakers of the machines, but possessed of all the memories of their originals, they had been unable to bear such a life. The robot Samantha Carter created portable power packs to sustain their lives away from Harlan's world, and they continued to fight the False Gods just as they had before.

The SGC believes these mechanical copies destroyed on Juna. They may wonder if Harlan could resurrect them, but they do not _know_. Repaired or re-created, Teal'c does not know and they have never told him. But alive again. Teal'c discovered their continued existence by accident. And he...

Years after their creation he returned to Chulak, thinking the Jaffa had won their freedom at last, and learned the bitterest lesson of all -- a thing he should have understood from his years among the _Tau'ri_ , and had somehow never realized. He would now have to fight his allies, his brothers, as desperately as he once fought the _Goa'uld_ , only this would be a battle that could not be fought with weapons, sometimes not even with words. It was a battle that must be waged as secretly, as dishonorably, as any their former masters had waged, one without heroes or victories or end. One he _must_ win, for the soul and the future of the Jaffa.

He dared not seek alliance among the _Tau'ri_ this time, but he still needed allies. And so he sought out four whom he knew he could trust completely. Four without ties to Earth. Four who loved his people and the _Tau'ri_ without belonging to either race. For years now he and they have worked together to summon the future that _must_ be.

"That was not your original, O'Neill. That was a clone, created some years later. Your original is dead."

"Well, they were dead, too, when we got there," the robot O'Neill says reasonably.

_"Jack!"_

"Sir!"

His own robot double says nothing, merely regarding him blandly.

"Oh, yeah," the robot O'Neill goes on with perverse relish. "Good thing we had the sarc with us on the _al'kesh_ and they'd managed to make it as far as the Stargate. They got better."

Bra'tac sent word when the rest of SG-35 came through the Chulak Gate. He sent them on their way as quickly as he could, because their commander was wounded, but they had told him enough that Teal'c sent _his_ SG-1 to Kheb to search for his young friend and comrade and for the clone of his brother-in-arms, the man who once showed him how to be free.

There is irony in that. Teal'c understands irony very well now.

"They did not see you?" Teal'c asks. The work they do together, he and they, is secret; the true Danielle Jackson is clever enough to understand too much should she discover the counterparts of SG-1 remain in existence. What she knows, others will quickly discover: there is no secrecy among the _Tau'ri_. And once Teal'c's work is discovered, it is at an end.

The robot O'Neill feigns a look of injury at Teal'c's question. "Doped them up with the same happy juice we used to take out the _Tok'ra_ while they were still trying to wake up. Dressed 'em up as Jaffa. Carter and I put on a couple of robes and took them through to Chulak. Rya'c was waiting for us. He said he'd get them to the SGC. Nobody saw us. Not to recognize."

"Very good."

"You goin' a little grey, there, Teal'c?"

"I am not, O'Neill." The name is a courtesy between allies.

"Still can't get used to the ... hair." It is a comment the robot often makes. Teal'c knows the machines think of themselves as human; despite the lightness of the tone, the robot O'Neill is made uncomfortable by the knowledge time has passed, things have changed. The true O'Neill never cared for any change he himself did not cause.

"I appreciate your efforts on my behalf. And theirs."

"Yeah. Clone, huh?"

"A clone. It is time for you to leave, O'Neill."

"Yeah. Taking the long way home, and these power packs won't last forever."

"About that, sir. I have an idea."

"Later, Carter."

"I wish you a safe journey, SG-1." Another courtesy.

"You know where to find us."

The robot O'Neill turns to its Carter. The robot Carter presses a button on a device strapped to its arm. The transport rings from the orbiting _al'kesh_ descend.

There's a hiss, a flash of light, and they are gone. Teal'c will see them again. They are the only relics of his past he will allow himself ever to see again.

The _Tau'ri_ are stubbornly unsophisticated; it is both their weakness and their strength. He knows Danielle Jackson loves John Nielsen, and not in the way a woman should love her husband's child. He saw it in her eyes and his when they came to Dakara. The two of them believe John Nielsen to be the father and not the son, but John Nielsen is the only child O'Neill will ever leave behind him. By the laws of his people Teal'c is required to put them both to death to preserve his dead brother's honor. He knows O'Neill would not have wished that. Yet to openly acknowledge what the wife of O'Neill has done would be too great a dishonor to his dead brother. He cannot do that either.

By choosing to save John Nielsen's life, Teal'c has preserved the shameful relationship. He will take care never to see either Danielle Jackson or John Nielsen again.

 _'Don't ask, don't tell._ ' A joke O'Neill often made. It always puzzled him, as so much of _Tau'ri_ humor did, especially as O'Neill never seemed to find it truly amusing, even though he made the joke often. Teal'c believes he understands it now. So much of _Tau'ri_ humor came from pain, yet they were the most fortunate race in the Galaxy, to have lived for so many centuries free of slavery to the False Gods. Enslaved only by their own kind. As his people now are.

It is time for him to leave as well. He cannot afford to be absent from Dakara for very long. There is much he needs to do there to summon the future the four of them -- he, O'Neill, Danielle Jackson, Samantha Carter -- dreamed of together, so very long ago

#

They both suffer the usual psychological aftereffect of exposure to a sarcophagus: the mind remembering injuries the body's forgotten. It's an odd perceptual double-exposure: usually it's the other way around: the body flaunting memories the mind insists on burying. When the two of them are finally let to go home, Jack brings her the small velvet box again, and this time she lets him put the ring on her finger. She feels nothing but panic. But she also knows this is what she wants. It's what she wanted in the shadow of death, and if you aren't going to be honest with yourself there, you never will be. Misery forward and misery back. No way to avoid the pain. Bittersweet.

So she accepts the ring, and cries, and they set a date.

#

On her first day back at work -- five days after Rya'c and three nameless Jaffa carried her and Jack through the Stargate telling Sammy a pack of lies, and two weeks before she will marry Jack yet again (though the world will think she's marrying someone named John Nielsen this time) -- the first thing she does is review the pictures from the UAV overflight. The other Stargate is down and mostly buried. The other DHD's gone completely. Most of the surrounding forest is ash. The Garden of the Gods -- so called -- has been reduced to an empty crater.

It's after noon before she gets the chance to go to the Infirmary to see McCluskey. (AA&T isn't quite as much of a mess as she thought it might be, but her desk needs serious excavating.) She tried to see her before she and Jack left the Mountain, but she was asleep and Erin wouldn't let Dani wake her. Dani's already seen Pierce and Kyle; they came to visit while she and Jack were in Isolation Quarters. The last thing either Pierce or Kyle remembers is being marched into Ereshkigal's throne room and seeing she was _naked_ , and then waking up in the armory. They don't remember Ereshkigal calling John 'Jack O'Neill'. They don't remember any of the other things Ereshkigal said, either -- about her and Jack and Hathor. She and Jack have talked about that now. Again. No easier the second time, except Jack talks a lot more than he did the first time, and she cries a lot more. So Dani figures she and McCluskey might as well talk, too. When she gets there, McCluskey's sitting up in bed. Working. She sets the papers aside when Dani appears.

"I wondered when you'd be along."

"I came to see you before. You were asleep."

"Hunnicutt told me."

"I just wanted to say--"

"Sit down, Danielle."

She sits. McCluskey's always telling her to sit down.

"You pulled a gun on your team on Kheb. Don't do it again."

She stares at McCluskey. She knows she's gaping in confusion. _My team?_ She hasn't talked to Sammy yet -- too busy -- but they're not her team any more. Can't be. Surely this is a dead issue. "I-- But I-- Kheb. My glasses--"

"You thought you could get away with it because Kheb was going to be your last mission. That's pretty obvious. Sorry to disappoint you. I asked General Carter for a medical waiver for you because SG-35 doesn't generally go into Live Fire situations."

"And she granted it? Still?" Dani asks incredulously. "After _Kheb?_ "

"I told her I'd cry if she didn't," McCluskey says blandly. "If you and John could come back from that, I figure you can come back from anything. So you're still on the team."

Dani stares.

"Danielle? Say something."

"We're getting married. Two weeks. Come to the wedding. Can I still--"

"Nice of you two crazy kids to finally make it legal. And it's not going to make a damned bit of difference to anybody. Nobody cares what civilians do."

"That's right." Dani takes a deep breath. "They don't."

"About the gun?"

"I'm sorry. I promise. I won't do it again." She hopes she won't have to do it again. She's pretty sure Maggie will forgive her even if she does.

"Run along then. I've got work to do. And so do you."

#

It's time to put Colonel O'Neill away again. _Jack_ O'Neill, that guy he can be. And is. John Nielsen is -- more or less -- a cover story. Not the doctorates and the engineering skills; he's earned those, they're part of him now. Just the name and the age and a few details of the personal history. But he's not a Colonel any more. Retired. Very retired. He's earned that, too.

Oh Kheb, telling Indy and McCluskey to go find the armory and try to rescue the others while he created a diversion ... it came back so easily. And he should have known even then Indy wouldn't follow orders. His. McCluskey's. She never -- quite -- does. She came back for him. Saved his life. Been willing to die with him. (Had, he's fairly sure, died with him.) But they're back now. And they'll have a life together. They've both earned that.

#

John gets the rings and the license. They work out a guest-list for the party together. Just friends. No need to invite anyone else. Dani finds a caterer, and orders tubs of pasta and salads, stacks of pizzas, a twelve-foot hero or two. No puff pastries. No canapés. No caviar. (No white-coated waiters.) Cases of beer. Cases of champagne (expected at a wedding reception, even an informal one). Cases of soda, much of which will probably languish in the garage for months afterward. A few dozen bottles of the hard stuff. And she's done.

A week later they marry. (35's been on stand-down the entire time they've been back; McCluskey isn't cleared to go into the field yet, though she's back at her desk, and Dani and the others are still being debriefed about the Kheb mission.) The ceremony's at the Courthouse. Quiet, small, and legal. It's all she wants. Everyone's in civilian clothes. Afterward, they drive back to the house. The reception's already in full swing. A party, really. All their friends. Only their friends. Her second wedding. Antithesis of her last, except for one thing: she's still marrying the man she loves.

She doesn't know what she hopes for from her marriage.

Love, yes. Absolution? She's gotten as much of that as she ever will. Happiness? What they can make for themselves. The chance to do good? She's always had that, and has done as much of it as she could. And will go on doing it for as long as she can. Both of them. Together. As it should be.

Daniel said once, a long time ago, that she was good, and worthy of love. His farewell gift to her, she knows now. That she was worthy of love. And loved.

And is loved again.

#

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Yes, all the chapter titles are the titles of big Hollywood Movies. Except _The Last Charge of the Calcutta Light Horse_ , which is the title of the book that became one of the many movies released with the title _The Flight of the Wild Geese_. And I could not resist it. If you've ever seen the movie, you'll understand. Honest. Trust me.
> 
> 2\. I love SG-35 with the fire of a thousand suns, especially Colonel Mary Margaret Perline McClusky. Just so you know.
> 
> 3\. This was originally supposed to be a thirty page story about househunting in DC that would have directly followed "Obverse Variations". I still have that bit around here somewhere, because I ended up cutting it. I expunged my need to write houseporn about Washington in another story, which would kind of fit in as the missing years of this one, only not, as it has a (linear) happy ending. But meanwhile, this thing just took off, and suddenly it was ten years later, and things kept happening, and then it was a hundred thousand years -- I mean words -- later.
> 
> 4\. I had huge amounts of fun writing about the everyday workings of the SGC, and coming up with alien missions (that would probably be too boring for television). I also like my future a lot better than one involving the Ori and the Lucian Alliance. Just so you know. Because I really thought they could have done a lot more with the ruin of the Goa'uld Empire. And also: semi-immortal parasitic snakes with a habit of hiding out in booby-trapped canopic jars? There's no way you're going to get rid of all of them just by executing a few System Lords here and there.
> 
> 5\. I bet other people do better summaries and afterwords than I do. I never know what to say.


End file.
